


Kith and Kin, Hearth and Home

by Ostentenacity



Series: the road home [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blind!Jonathan Sims, Fix-It (sorta), Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Post MAG 154, the "background" relationships aren't the Main Point but they are important and have development, though he's more of a side character in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24339217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ostentenacity/pseuds/Ostentenacity
Summary: “We both care about Jon,” says Daisy. “And besides, I really do prefer the company. Think of it as a favor for… for a friend of a friend.”Martin scowls vaguely at the floor, but he doesn’t argue further, and he doesn’t leave. Daisy goes back to her book, hoping she made the right call.---After being rebuffed, Jon quits alone, and winds up back in a coma. Martin and Daisy keep finding each other at his bedside while they wait for him to wake.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner (background), Martin Blackwood & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims (background)
Series: the road home [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1801396
Comments: 319
Kudos: 739





	1. Out

**Author's Note:**

> Listen I just had a lot of feelings about Martin and Daisy becoming friends okay?????
> 
> Thanks to [Bloodsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bloodsbane), [evanescent_jasmine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanescent_jasmine), and [zykaben](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zykaben) for beta reading!
> 
> T for swears and offscreen canon-typical violence. There will be specific warnings at the end of each chapter, but expect a baseline of hospitals, coma, and chronic pain/illness as repeating subjects.

_ Who are you kidding, Jon? You’re not going to do any of that. _

The words ring in Jon’s head for hours afterwards, late into the night. He can’t sleep. Any other night, that would be a blessing, but not with the image of Martin’s cold, empty smile seared into his mind’s eye.

A wave of grief abruptly smothers him, and he has to gasp for breath between shuddering sobs. This place  _ killed _ Sasha, and Tim, and even Jon himself for a while. And now it’s taken Martin too, eaten him up and left an empty shell in his place. Maybe there’s something of him left, submerged under the fog, but Jon doesn’t have the slightest idea of how to attempt a rescue. And isn’t that just perfect? He’s full to bursting with things he doesn’t want to know, but when it actually matters, he’s always drawing a blank.

A bitter laugh forces its way out of Jon’s throat. Maybe if he  _ quits, _ the way Eric Delano did, he’ll be able to come up with a workable plan out of sheer irony.

* * *

It’s not until he’s falling headfirst into the dark that he remembers promising that he’d be there if Martin ever needed him.  _ Can’t even keep a simple goddamned promise, _ he thinks, and then,  _ I’m sorry, Martin,  _ and then he thinks nothing at all.

* * *

When Daisy wakes up in the middle of the night, she knows immediately that something’s gone wrong.

Before the Unknowing, before the coffin, before the miraculous rescue, the Institute had always made her feel like there were a thousand dispassionate eyes on her—staring from every angle, seeing into her and through her—every second she stood within its walls. When she’d emerged, caked in dirt and aching and alive, into the open air of Jon’s office, it hadn’t taken her long to realize that something was different. The eyes had been weaker, the air colder. The walls had seemed thin before; she’d always been able to hear conversations in the next room easily. After the coffin, it was easy to miss conversations happening ten feet away.

The feeling of being watched hadn’t  _ disappeared, _ of course. But it had decreased by inches as the cold grew stronger. Not enough to notice it happening, really; just enough to realize in retrospect after a month or two.

_ This _ is enough of a difference to notice. The eyes are  _ gone. _

Basira bursts through the door, looking haunted. Her hands and clothes are smeared with dark paint.

No. Wait. 

Daisy claps a hand over her nose and mouth. The smell has never bothered her much before, but that’s a  _ lot, _ and she’s not inclined to take chances.

Basira winces, face contorting into an apologetic grimace, and hurries back out of the room. When she returns, a few minutes later, she’s changed her shirt and trousers, and her hands are freshly scrubbed. Daisy takes a cautious breath: nothing but the artificial floral scent of the hand soap from the loo. She sighs in relief, and then her brain finally catches up, and she asks, “What  _ happened?” _

Basira drops heavily into a chair. “Jon happened,” she says, sounding every bit as exhausted as she looks. “The damn idiot put his eyes out. As far as I can tell, anyway.”

The bottom falls out of Daisy’s stomach.  _ “What?  _ Do—d’you mean, like—?”

“With an awl.”

Daisy swallows hard several times against the bile at the back of her tongue. “Why on  _ Earth _ would he—?”

But Basira is shaking her head. “I have no idea. We haven’t found a note or anything.”

And she thought the bile was bad. For a moment, Daisy feels as though she’s going to faint.

Basira must notice, because she adds hastily, “He’s still—well, he’s not dead. But the paramedics said… He’s lost a lot of blood. And he wasn’t healing. At least, not the way he has been the past few months. It looked like he’d been there a while, when I found him.” Basira swallows hard, looking every bit as queasy as Daisy feels. 

“Fuck,” says Daisy quietly. Then, “Do you know where they took him?”

* * *

Daisy isn’t able to get in to see Jon that day, or the next, or even the one after that; his condition is apparently precarious following the initial surgery, and more so following the second. But finally, on the fourth day, a nurse leads her down a sterile hallway to a nondescript, numbered door. The room beyond has more medical equipment than it does empty space, but in the narrow bed, looking very small, is Jon.

There are bandages covering the upper half of his face, and tubes covering the lower. An IV line trails from a stand down to the crook of his elbow, and a dozen machines beep and whirr all around. But despite the mechanical cacophony, it’s eerily quiet. Not a soothing quiet, like Daisy has been getting accustomed to of late. It feels  _ wrong  _ to see Jon, her unlikely savior, her friend, so lifeless and still.

But he  _ is _ breathing, and he’s quiet and calm-ish, which makes him better company than either Basira (full of frenetic energy) or Melanie (flinching at shadows). And besides, Daisy is not at all inclined to be in the Institute right now, not after the spectacle Jon had made. 

She sits down in one of the plastic armchairs and settles in to wait.

* * *

When Martin walks in on Elias and Peter having a shouting match, it’s obvious that something’s gone wrong.

“—did  _ not  _ give you permission to undo all my progress—” Elias is snarling. There’s a piece of paper crumpled in one of his fists.

Peter, meanwhile, is talking over him. “—any means necessary short of deliberate, direct interference, those were your  _ exact  _ words—”

Martin raises a hand and deliberately knocks on the open door. When that fails to produce the desired result, he clears his throat loudly. 

“—might have to start over from  _ scratch,  _ the current staff know  _ far _ too much—”

“—held up my end of the bargain, it’s not  _ my _ fault your Archivist wasn’t devoted enough—”

“What is going  _ on?” _ Martin snaps, louder than even Elias and Peter’s raised voices, and they finally stop and turn to look at him, both seeming surprised to find someone in the doorway.

Peter recovers first. “Good morning, Martin,” he says, with a familiar empty geniality. “Elias and I were just having a disagreement over some staffing issues. Nothing major, it’s not the end of the world—”

Elias backhands Peter across the face with his empty hand, hard enough that he staggers back a few steps. 

Martin stares. “Weren’t you in  _ prison?” _ he asks, feeling slower than he ever has in his life. “How—?”

Elias smiles tightly, but there’s a banked fury in his expression that makes Martin shiver, even in his numb state. “A trivial inconvenience,” he says. “Easily surmountable by a man of my connections. The more interesting question is  _ why  _ I’ve returned.”

Peter straightens, blood trickling from the welts where Elias’s fingernails had caught him. “Elias,” he says warningly. “That’s not  _ fair.” _

“I returned—” Elias begins, and fog abruptly fills the room, dense and white, so thick Martin can’t see his hand in front of his face. It’s sort of soothing, the cold, quiet weight of it; Martin is suddenly half-tempted to go lie down and sleep.

But then, just as abruptly as it had rolled in, the fog burns away, replaced by an awful, skin-crawling sensation, and the return of the ambient sound of the building. Martin blinks. Both Peter and Elias are breathing hard, as though they’d both just been running.

“This is  _ my _ Institute, Peter,” Elias hisses. “I suggest you recall that fact in future.” Turning back to Martin, he says, “I returned because Peter was so incompetent as interim director of the Institute that he allowed my Archivist to resign.”

For a moment, Martin doesn’t understand what Elias is talking about. Then the double meaning hits, and ice water rushes through his veins. “No,” he whispers through suddenly-nerveless lips.

An icy, cruel smile creeps across Elias’s face. “I’m afraid so,” he says. “Quite a shame, really, after all the good work he’s done. I’m certain he’ll recover in time, though unfortunately not to a state that will allow him to continue with his work.” He turns slightly, still addressing Martin, but very obviously including Peter in the conversation as well. “I expect you’ll want to go visit him in hospital? I’m given to understand that bedside vigils can help with feelings of  _ loneliness.” _ His smile turns into a sneer on that last word, and then he’s sweeping past Martin and down the hall.

For a long moment, Martin and Peter stand across the room from one another, each waiting for the other to break the silence. Then Martin turns and walks out as well, leaving behind an empty room.

* * *

Elias hadn’t told him which hospital Jon had been taken to, of course, but when Martin arrives in front of St Thomas’, only a short distance from the Institute, he somehow knows he’s found the right place. It makes sense—it’s not like Jon had somewhere else to enact his plan, and given an injury like that, the doctors probably wanted to get him into surgery as fast as possible.

Martin wonders where Jon thought he was going to  _ go _ afterwards. He very much doubts that Elias will want him staying in the archives now that he’s gone and—and  _ quit. _ It’s not like Jon has a flat anymore, and from the way Georgie had been talking the one time Martin had run into her at the Institute, it hadn’t sounded as though she’d be too eager to suddenly offer him a place to stay. All of the others are staying in the archives, and in all the months of Jon’s coma—his  _ first  _ coma, Martin corrects himself with a vague twinge of nausea—nobody else had come to visit, or even sent so much as a get-well-soon card.

Martin realizes, all of a sudden, that he might very well be the only person Jon knows in the entire world who’d be both willing and able to take him in. He doesn’t know what to do with that thought. It sits in his brain like a rock at the bottom of a pond. Once, he might have been—excited, maybe? Or apprehensive? But right now all he feels is heavy and gray.

It takes him a long time to find Jon. He’s not sure whether hours are passing, or days; he’s vaguely aware of other people in the halls, but he can’t bring himself to focus on them.

But, eventually, he pushes open a door in the intensive care ward, and the figure in the bed is familiar.

Martin looks around to make sure the room is empty before he lets himself in. There’s a jacket slung over the back of one of the two chairs by the side of the bed. He doesn’t recognize it, and that’s enough to put him on edge. But Jon seems—

Well.  _ Fine _ isn’t the right word, not at all. But he doesn’t seem injured aside from the bandaged areas, and there’s nothing suspicious in the setup of the machines, so Martin sits heavily in the other chair and stares helplessly at the obscured face of the man he loves more than his own life, and wishes he could find it in himself to cry.

* * *

Daisy had been reluctant to leave Jon alone for the first few days she’d been allowed to see him, in case he suddenly awoke. The staff had been cheerful, at first. Extended coma following general anesthesia is rare, they’d told her, and the scans hadn’t revealed significant brain damage, even with the blood loss, and the bruising where his head had hit the ground. But when several days pass with little improvement, the atmosphere becomes more subdued, settling in for a long wait. Jon’s injuries are healing—albeit more slowly than they should, given his recent track record—but there’s been no change in his level of consciousness. No sign that he’s waking up.

Basira had told her about the strange coma he’d been in after the Unknowing; the improbable swirl of brain activity, in stark comparison to his nonfunctional heart and lungs. This is the opposite: his vital functions are still in operation, but very little is going on inside his skull. If— _ when _ —he wakes up, there will be signs well in advance.

She thinks about talking to him. That’s a thing people do with coma patients, right? But she doesn’t really know what to say. She’ll take peace and quiet over listening to someone yammer on about nothing any day, and Jon can’t exactly tell her to stop if she’s boring him. So she just sits there in what she hopes is companionable silence.

When she returns from grabbing a quick—and thoroughly unappetizing—lunch in the hospital cafeteria, the sixth day after Jon had been admitted, she finds the room as quiet as before. Nobody else has come to visit yet; Melanie is too freaked out by the whole ordeal, and Basira has been too busy picking up everyone else’s slack.

Eventually, Daisy will have to go back to the Institute. She can feel the creeping sickness building up, the slow death that’s neither starvation nor exhaustion approaching. But it’s a ways off still; weeks, probably, even if she doesn’t go back. Which she will, of course, because it  _ hurts _ and she’s not interested in dying pointlessly. But not today. Probably not tomorrow, either.

She leans back in the armchair, getting as comfortable as she can, before pulling up the book she’s been reading on her phone. It’s hard to focus, though. Nothing has changed, but the room feels colder, more sterile. Emptier. 

Daisy’s eyes narrow. 

She looks around the room with deliberate care. There’s nobody lurking in the corners, or in the attached bathroom, or under the bed. She even pokes her head out into the corridor, but the sudden burst of noise discourages her. This isn’t coming from outside; if there is something going on, the source is in the room with her.

She closes the door and turns back to face the bed and chairs, and nearly has a heart attack. Sitting in the other armchair, not a foot from where she’d been earlier, is Martin.

He looks…  _ bad.  _ He’d been tired-looking and pale the last time Daisy had seen him, when he’d unceremoniously banished her from his office, but this is worse. He looks like a corpse. If not for the fact that she’d somehow managed not to notice he was there for upwards of twenty minutes, she might even think he was one.

But she  _ did _ fail to notice him, which means he’s alive enough to use whatever weird powers working with Lukas has given him. And that can’t possibly be good for Jon. Or for Daisy herself, for that matter.

“What are you doing here?” she asks coolly.

His eyes flicker vaguely toward her, then back towards Jon. He doesn’t answer.

“I  _ said,”  _ she says louder, stalking over to stand in front of him. “What are you  _ doing _ here?”

With Daisy blocking his line of sight, he’s forced to look at her. He doesn’t make eye contact, though. “Visiting,” he says, voice so quiet and washed-out that she has to strain to catch it over the beeping of the heart monitor.

“What happened to  _ there are more important things than feelings right now?”  _ she asks, voice even but not gentle. “Don’t you have work to do with Lukas?”

He doesn’t move, but he seems to shrink in on himself somehow regardless. “That’s over,” he says. “I’m not… I can’t. I’m done.”

“What changed?”

“There’s no point anymore,” he says softly, sounding lost.

Daisy suddenly remembers his frustration with Jon’s inability to stay safe, and several things click into place. She sighs heavily, shoulders easing. “All right. Stay if you want—it’s not like I can kick you out, anyway. But can you, I dunno, tone down the moping? It’s not helping.”

“What?”

Daisy gestures at the room around them, as though the strangeness in the air were visible. “This. Whatever it is you’re doing to make it all cold and empty. Not a good atmosphere for a hospital.”

That’s the first thing she’s said that seems to make a real impression on him. A flicker of guilt passes across his face, and he takes several deep breaths, shutting his eyes. Then he opens them again, and meets Daisy’s gaze for the first time since she spotted him. The depth of anguish there makes her step back, her throat tightening, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. 

“I don’t know  _ how,” _ he says. “I think I forgot.”

She considers, very briefly, asking him politely to get lost. But that wouldn’t be fair, would it? Daisy had needed help, when she’d become something other than human. No matter how cold and rude he’d been last time they talked, she owes it to Jon, and to herself, to pay it forward. 

And besides, Jon had been— _ is _ —totally smitten with the man, and she hates the thought of Jon waking up to find him vanished, and having to grieve his absence all over again.

Daisy sits down in the chair next to his. “He’s going to wake up, you know.”

“What?”

“Jon.” She nods towards the narrow bed and the narrow figure within it. “He’s not gone. Too stubborn to die, that one. Sure, it’s taking him a while, but he’ll get there. And…” Daisy pauses. Something is hanging on her next few words. Something  _ important. _ She has to get them right. “And while we’re both waiting, we might as well wait together.”

Martin’s shoulders hunch. “I’m fine on my own.” His voice is somehow fainter than before.

Daisy curses inwardly—what a fine start she’s off to. She casts about for a likely strategy. What does she know about Martin? “I know  _ you _ are,” she lies. “But I prefer company. You don’t even have to talk, if you don’t want to. Just sit there and be, you know. There.”

Martin gives her an unimpressed look. But the deep, aching sorrow has receded from his expression. “You do realize that if just sitting next to someone could help, I’d never have gotten this deep? I take the Tube to and from work every day.”

“Those are strangers,” she says.

“And we’re such good friends, are we?”

“We both care about Jon,” she says. “And besides, I really do prefer the company. Think of it as a favor for… for a friend of a friend.”

Martin scowls vaguely at the floor, but he doesn’t argue further, and he doesn’t leave. Daisy goes back to her book, hoping she made the right call.

When the nurse comes to shoo them out at the end of visiting hours, Martin doesn’t say a word, just walks out the door. But when Daisy emerges into the corridor, she realizes that it feels just the same as Jon’s room. There’s no sudden burst of warmth and noise and life. Not because the emptiness had started leaking out into the rest of the hospital, though; it’s because, over the course of the afternoon, Jon’s hospital room had gone back to normal, gradually enough that she didn’t notice.

It’s not a miracle; Martin had still looked cold and withdrawn, and he’d cringed at the sudden sound of the nurse’s voice as though it had been a jet engine. But it’s a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: offscreen eye trauma, blood, hospitals.
> 
> Comments are love! Tell me what you think :D


	2. Conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end notes.

Martin doesn’t know why Daisy bothers.

He’s not exactly pleasant company; he knows that much. He’s spent too long starving himself of company, so his conversational skills have atrophied even in the short time between the last conversation he’d had with her before Jon had quit. And even before Peter, he knows he wasn’t exactly everyone’s favorite around the office, no matter how much he’d tried to make himself into a helpful presence, a friendly face. So it’s clear that Daisy is doing this for more than just her own sake. 

Sure, maybe she’s telling the truth that she likes company, that she dislikes being alone. The way the tension bleeds out of her whenever Martin arrives, the way she tenses up again when he’s ready to go, bears that out. 

(Martin’s always been a perceptive person; he’s always been a good judge of people. But this goes beyond that. When she’s lonely, he can very nearly taste her discomfort in the air, and that fact revolts him even as it’s strangely intoxicating. But even though it hurts to push that feeling back, it’s also a relief, in an obscure way. It makes him feel less twisted up and strange inside to have something to push against.)

But that’s not the point. The point is that Daisy, unlike Martin, has friends. Friends who, last he checked, were significantly less risky to her health than him. She doesn’t have to spend time with him, if she just doesn’t want to be alone.

She doesn’t even have to spend time with him in order to keep Jon company, not _ really.  _ Martin isn’t fond of the idea of staying in shifts—he doesn’t exactly have anything else to do with his time, and he doesn’t want to do nothing somewhere far away when he could be doing nothing here instead—but there are plenty of ways to avoid someone’s company, even in a room as small as this. She doesn’t let him, though.

Once or twice, before she’d arrived for the day, he’d dragged his chair over to a different corner of the room, just to see what Daisy would do. When she’d arrived, she’d dragged her chair over next to his, silently and with studied nonchalance. She hadn’t tried to crowd him. She’d just sat quietly, a couple of feet away, reading something on her phone. 

She doesn’t even really talk to Martin aside from saying hello or goodbye, but she’s deliberately  _ present _ in a way that’s impossible to ignore. It stops him from fading the way he used to, when he went days and days without any meaningful company. It’s also  _ excruciating. _

After a week, Martin can’t take it anymore.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks abruptly. 

Daisy blinks at him. “Why am I doing what?”

_ “This,”  _ says Martin, and waves a hand at their chairs. “I know you said it’s because you prefer company, but you can’t possibly tell me this is  _ all _ for your sake. You’re still on speaking terms with the others.”

Daisy slides her phone into a pocket, using it as an excuse not to look up. “I am, yes,” she says at length. “That doesn’t mean that they’re willing to spend extended periods of time at the hospital with me, waiting for him”—a nod towards the bed—“to wake up. But you’re right. It’s not just for me.”

“What are you even trying to accomplish?” Martin asks.

She shrugs, hands clasped awkwardly in her lap. “I dunno, exactly. But you never struck me as the type to want to be ignored, before. I think you’re slipping away, and I wanted to give you a chance not to.”

“So this is, what? Pity?” He can’t help the cold edge in his voice.

But she’s shaking her head. “No. I don’t… I don’t feel  _ bad _ for you. Not exactly. I just… I know something about where you are right now. S’not the same as what happened to me, of course. But I couldn’t have gotten out without help, and I don’t think you can, either.”

“Ah. It’s penance, then.”

Daisy lets out a huffy sigh, the first sign of annoyance Martin has seen from her since their first conversation at Jon’s bedside. “If you want to think of it that way, sure. But if you won’t accept help for my sake, and you won’t accept help for your sake, then maybe you can for Jon’s.”

Martin blinks. “What do you mean?”

Daisy pauses, clearly thinking over her response carefully. At length, she says, “If you hate the thought of my being here for you out of sympathy for what you’re going through, or because I think I owe it to the world to stop other people going down the road I did, then that’s fine. I don’t blame you. But I care about Jon, and Jon cares about  _ you, _ and even if you don’t end up wanting to be around him anymore, I think you care enough about him to not want him to wake up to the news that you’d  _ died.  _ Or even just gone missing.”

Martin takes a deep breath. Opens his mouth. Closes it again. After a few moments of silence, he says, in a very small voice, “I  _ do _ want to be around him. I just don’t know if I remember how. To be around people, that is. It’s so  _ much.” _

“Try starting small, then,” says Daisy.

Martin glances up at her, and finds nothing but sincerity in her expression. He only holds her gaze for a few seconds before he has to look away again. His eyes fall on Jon, still silent and unmoving.

“I’ll try,” says Martin.

* * *

“Good morning, Martin,” says Daisy when she arrives the next morning. 

“Good morning, Daisy,” he says. She nearly drops her coffee in shock. His eyes flick up, and then away, as though embarrassed by her attention.

She forces her eyebrows back down before she can make the moment any more awkward. As she fumbles for a napkin to wipe away the coffee that sloshed out of her cup before it can stain her shirt, though, she realizes something.

“Have you had breakfast?” she asks.

Now Martin looks vaguely suspicious instead of embarrassed. Daisy isn’t sure whether it’s an improvement or not. “...Why?” he asks.

Daisy shrugs. “I stop by a cafe on my way here every morning. I can grab you something next time, if you want.”

“That’s not necessary,” he says.

“I don’t mind.”

He just hunches his shoulders and shakes his head.

Daisy may not be a detective anymore, but she still knows how to read people, and judging by the way Martin is rubbing his hands from temple to jaw, her attempt at conversation is overwhelming him. She wouldn’t be surprised to see him cover his ears if she carries on further. So she just says, “All right then,” and takes a sip of her coffee.

That evening, though, just before the nurse usually turns up to escort them out, she opens her phone’s contact list and holds it out to him. 

He stares at her. “What are you doing?”

“I might have to go back to the Institute soon,” she says. “I’m already starting to feel weaker from how long I’ve been away. If you give me your number, I can let you know if I can’t make it to the hospital.”

His confusion retreats back behind the blank mask, but he does take the phone and type in his number. When he hands it back, she says, “Thanks,” and then promptly sends him a text:

_ This is Daisy. Let me know if you want anything from the cafe tomorrow morning. _

He rolls his eyes. But that’s more animation than he normally has in him by the end of the day, so Daisy counts it as a success.

* * *

Martin hadn’t realized until Daisy had offered to bring him something that he can’t remember the last time he ate. 

He’s sure he  _ has _ eaten recently; he doesn’t think he was far enough along into the fog to forego physical needs entirely. But the time he spends alone in his flat, or on the way to and from the hospital, is a blur compared to the nearly painful clarity of the hospital room. It’s impossible to be unaware of the passage of time with the discordant polyrhythm of Daisy’s steady breathing and Jon’s heart monitor reminding him that he’s in close quarters with other living people. But the moment he’s out the door, the world turns into a swirl of gray watercolor until the next morning.

It’s disturbing. And more to the point, he’s almost certainly going to need to do something about it, if he’s to be of any help to Jon.

He tries to hang on to his senses as he leaves the hospital. He really, really does. But the crowd on the Tube blends together, all the faces looking alike, yet not familiar, and it’s  _ too much. _ And so he retreats back into the comforting numbness he’s become accustomed to. 

He does have a moment of clarity upon waking up the next morning, and lets out an involuntary groan of frustration. Despite his best efforts, everything between stepping off the train and waking up is an indistinct mess.

He focuses very hard on staying lucid while he’s showering and getting dressed, walking to the station, waiting for the train. It’s not rush hour, so it’s not as crowded as it could be, but it’s still hard not to let the impersonal press of humanity empty out his skull. By the time he makes it to the hospital room, he’s hanging onto his conscious mind by the tips of his metaphorical fingers.

Being near Jon helps some, but he’s not  _ present _ the way Daisy always is. Martin finds himself wishing that she were here so that it would be easier. She usually arrives about twenty or thirty minutes after he does, so it’ll probably be a while. 

His stomach takes this opportunity to rumble in protest. Martin thinks back over the morning and groans when he realizes that in his single-minded determination to get here without spacing out, he’d forgotten that food existed. 

He could go to the cafeteria, he supposes. But no—even at this hour, it’ll be full of people, and he’ll lose his focus. He’ll just have to wait until lunch, when he can follow Daisy down and hover in her general vicinity. 

Then again, she  _ had _ offered to pick something up from that cafe of hers. He could text her. But maybe she hadn’t been making a serious offer? No—she doesn’t strike him as the sort to play that kind of mind game. 

Still, the idea of taking his phone out, pulling up their conversation, and figuring out how to ask a favor in a way that doesn’t sound pathetic is a daunting task. What would he even say?  _ Hi, Daisy! Sorry I was such a grump yesterday—soulsucking eldritch monsters are no walk in the park. Anyway, would you be so kind as to pick up that breakfast I said I didn’t want? Ta! _

Martin drops his face into his hands and attempts to rub away his headache.

When Daisy arrives an indeterminate amount of time later, Martin realizes that he’s slipped back into his familiar haze. He shakes his head to clear it as Daisy settles herself into the chair beside him, settling her coffee and a small brown paper bag on the tiny end table.

“Morning,” she says, same as always.

“Morning,” he mutters, frustrated and still hungry. She doesn’t seem to notice his tone. Or at least, if she does, she’s doing a good job of ignoring it.

The smell of her coffee is torturous. Martin has never understood why people  _ drink _ the stuff, but he’s always enjoyed the heavy, rich scent. If he were to hazard a guess, he’d say that Daisy takes hers with sugar; it looks like black coffee, but the syrupy aroma isn’t quite bitter enough. He realizes that he’s staring, and refocuses his gaze on Jon’s hand where it rests against the sheets, unwilling to make himself into even more of a spectacle.

But his resolve is broken when Daisy picks up that little paper bag, stares inside for a minute, and then sighs. “Don’t suppose you’re hungry?” she asks.

His stomach takes this horribly apropos moment to complain again.

“I got a croissant, but I don’t have much of an appetite,” she says. “You can have—”

“I don’t need your pity  _ or _ your charity,” says Martin icily, and immediately feels his soul shrivel up into a miserable ball of humiliation. Daisy blinks at him. “...Sorry,” he mutters after a few seconds. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. Well. I guess I do, but… sorry.”

“S’all right,” says Daisy, with remarkable ease. “I… I’ll admit it  _ was _ partially in case you’d changed your mind, but I really did overestimate my appetite. Shouldn’t be surprised, really. Coffee’s about as much as I can manage before noon, these days.” She huffs a brief, mirthless laugh.

Martin takes another look at her. She’s thinner than he remembers—the bones of her face and hands stand out more starkly than they had even a few weeks ago, when they’d spoken in his office. She’d already had a few grays, the last time he’d thought to look, but now her hair is more gray than blonde. He glances away.

“...Thanks,” he says grudgingly. “I… I thought about texting, but I… I lost track of the time, I guess. Sorry for snapping at you.”

She shrugs as she hands over the bag. “I can’t really blame you. I  _ am _ being sort of pushy.”

Martin waits for the other shoe to drop, but she seems to be done talking, so he forces himself to let it go. It’s strangely difficult to eat now that he’s aware of the need to do so, but Daisy is back to her usual deliberately casual silence, and she doesn’t look at him, so it’s not so bad. 

Almost like being alone, really. Except without the loneliness.

* * *

“Daisy?” says Martin, a little after noon.

Daisy looks up, secretly glad for the interruption. She’s had to give up mystery novels of late—trying to figure out who the culprit is whets her appetite in a way she doesn’t like—and she hasn’t yet found anything that catches her interest quite as well. “Yes?”

He fidgets, shoulders hunching. His eyes flick away from her, examining the edges of the room instead.  _ Guilty, _ the blood whispers to her.  _ Afraid. Hiding something. _

She takes a deep breath and lets it go. Then she deliberately lets her gaze slide off him, until he’s a vaguely humanoid shape in her peripheral vision. She’s unable to pick out details like this, which makes her blood-hungry hindbrain whine in protest, but she thinks his shoulders might have relaxed. 

“It’s—I just thought, because you—I mean—” He pauses for a moment, then says, “You said you’ve been having… problems with your appetite?”

Daisy frowns thoughtfully, trying to figure out how to put into words the slow atrophy of her will to eat real food even as her hunger grows stronger. But before she can say anything, Martin starts speaking again, his voice high and nervous. “Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to—to  _ pry,  _ I just—you mentioned it, is all, and I thought maybe—”

She stares at him, perplexed, and he falls silent, curling in on himself like he’s trying to appear smaller than he is. He’s lost some of the color he’s regained over the past few days, too. 

Clearly there’s something she’s missed, but she doesn’t have the first clue of how to ask, and she’s starting to realize that the direct approach isn’t always the best tactic to take with him. So instead she lets her gaze drift again, and answers the original question. “S’fine. Uh. Yeah, I haven’t been eating much since I… since the coffin. Everything just sort of tastes wrong, or smells wrong, or  _ feels _ wrong, or… I dunno. It’s hard to explain.”

It’s quiet for a minute or two. Then, very tentatively, Martin says, “I, um. I have some experience, working around… tricky appetites? If you  _ want _ help with that, I mean, I don’t—sorry, you’ve probably tried plenty of things already _ —” _

“I haven’t,” she says. “Tried many alternatives, that is. It’s only been  _ really _ inconvenient for maybe two or three weeks.”

“Oh,” he says faintly. Then, “So…?”

Daisy shrugs. “If you have suggestions, I’ll listen. Might not work, of course—this isn’t exactly a normal illness—but I’d like to not starve.” She tries to keep her tone light, but the exhaustion and dread sneak up on her, turning her joke into something grimmer.

“All right then,” says Martin. “Lunch?”

“Now?” She considers the prospect. She could probably manage a few bites of something, at least. “Sure. I’ll give it a shot.”

“Okay!” Martin says, surprisingly enthusiastic given his anxiety earlier. He opens the door, but then pauses and closes it again, turning to the bed and Jon.

“Um. Sorry I haven’t been talking to you much, Jon,” he says, very quietly. Probably trying to speak low enough that Daisy won’t hear. She busies herself with her jacket. “I—it’s hard. But I’ll try. Um. Daisy and I are going to get something to eat, but we’ll be back soon. Okay?” He pauses, as if for an answer, and then sighs. “Right. Anyway. We’ll be back soon.” 

Daisy follows him out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: self-worth issues, dissociation, disordered/unhealthy eating habits
> 
> Want to make my day? Tell me what part of this chapter was your favorite!


	3. Understanding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end notes.

Martin’s assistance doesn’t work magic, but it does help. Leaving the hospital building makes a surprising amount of difference, and while Daisy wouldn’t usually think to order something as boring as a cheese sandwich, it’s inoffensive enough that she can actually stand to eat one entire half of it. She even manages to drain the fruit smoothie Martin suggests, to her surprise. 

Martin also picks at his food, but he, at least, cleans his plate. He quietly pays for both of them, and Daisy lets him; she doesn’t want to force him into an argument in front of strangers.

The small cafe they’d chosen—fancier than Daisy’s favorite coffeeshop, but still pleasantly homey—is quiet, but Martin still flinches whenever anyone at the neighboring tables speaks too loudly. Daisy begins to think that he’s sensitive to noise and she just never bothered to pay attention before, but then a car alarm goes off right outside and he doesn’t even seem to notice. 

She considers asking him about it on the way back, but decides to wait until they’re back inside; the traffic, both car and foot, is not particularly heavy, but there’s wind and road noise and chatter, and if it  _ does _ turn out to be a noise sensitivity, none of that will help.

(True to his word, Martin does say hello to Jon when they return, not that he’s in any shape to respond. But weird as it is to talk to someone who can’t answer, it helps make the whole situation feel more normal to acknowledge Jon’s presence, rather than treating him like the living, breathing elephant in the room.)

Once they settle back into their chairs, Daisy asks, “Do you not like it when people talk to you? Or, around you, or something?”

Martin ducks his head, but at least he doesn’t seem too embarrassed. His spirits had seemed to rise over the course of the meal, in fact, though Daisy isn’t sure whether it’s down to the company, the food, or the change of scenery. “Sort of. I’m not used to being around people while I’m… lucid, I guess is the best term? Most of the time I spend—spent—at the Institute, it was just me in my office. Sometimes someone would drop by, but it was usually just one person, and that person was usually Peter, and he barely counts. And when I take the Tube, I’m usually not very aware of my surroundings?” He shrugs. “It’s easier to just let myself… drift, I suppose. Though I’ve been trying not to do that. I think it makes…  _ this…  _ worse.”

Daisy winces. “That sounds rough.”

Martin just shrugs. Daisy decides not to push her luck any further today, and lapses back into silence.

* * *

Things continue in this manner for the rest of the week. Martin swallows his reluctance and texts Daisy his breakfast preferences, and the two of them continue to eat lunch outside of the hospital. Martin doesn’t particularly like having to leave the building every day, but he realizes that trying to spend every waking hour at Jon’s insensate side is more than a little bit ridiculous. Besides, Daisy needs the break from the sterile environment. He’s not sure whether it’s the smell or something else, but she definitely finds it easier to stomach food outside the hospital, just like his—just like he’d suspected she would. 

It’s  _ almost _ pleasant to sit down and eat with someone a few times a day. Martin hasn’t really had the chance to, not since the whole mess with Leitner ended his lunches with Jon. It feels bizarrely intimate after so many months of stress and isolation, even though he and Daisy don’t actually talk all that much. It’s not strictly unpleasant, he supposes, but definitely more weird than nice.

So it surprises him that, when Daisy texts him one morning to let him know that she’s feeling too sick to skip work again, he feels a sinking disappointment. He’s not even  _ friends _ with Daisy, he scolds himself. They’re just stuck together by circumstance, keeping each other sane because they’re each other’s best option, not out of any kind of sentimentality.

But he finds himself wishing she was there, not once but several times throughout the day. He almost forgets breakfast, since she hadn’t brought it; he almost forgoes lunch, since he doesn’t have to leave the building with her. The room feels too quiet without Daisy’s unimposing silence.

And isn’t that ironic, that  _ Daisy _ and  _ unimposing  _ can exist in the same sentence. She’d threatened to frame Martin for murder. She’d threatened Jon’s  _ life. _ Martin is suddenly cross, frustrated with himself for not realizing when he’d lost his old grudge, for letting the moment slip by unremarked-upon. After everything she’s done, it’s unbelievable that he misses her.

And yet.

Martin groans, face falling into his hands. He doesn’t know what to  _ do. _ He feels as though he should deliver some sort of ultimatum, try to resolve the mass of conflicting impulses somehow. But, even though he hasn’t been properly scared of Daisy in a long time—she’s too soft-spoken these days, not to mention sick-looking and scrawny—the idea of trying to confront her, of having an argument, carries its own flavor of terror. 

Besides, if he alienates her and she keeps spending time in Jon’s hospital room, it could limit the amount of time Martin gets to spend with Jon. Just imagining spending hours on end in a small room with someone who resents him has him in a state of near-panic.

He considers dipping back into the Lonely—enough that he’d be able to stay here, unheard and unseen, for as long as he likes regardless of company. But after a minute or two he realizes what he’s thinking about and roughly wrenches his thoughts back on track. It’s tempting. It’s  _ so _ tempting. But he has no guarantee that he’d be able to pull himself back out once Jon recovers, and he is determined, more than anything else, to be fully present the day Jon wakes up. 

The day passes slowly. To fill the silence, Martin talks to Jon. Only on and off, though, not the whole time; it’s not as if he’d taken a vow of silence since Jon’s first coma, but his voice is under-used, and he can feel it. Besides, every time he trails off, he’s reminded—painfully—that Jon can’t answer. Might not, in fact, be able to hear him in the first place. And he isn’t keen on the idea of getting used to talking to an unresponsive Jon. He’d rather wait until he can get used to having a real conversation.

Still not sure what he’s supposed to do about the whole situation, Martin is unable to prevent himself from falling into a stupor on the way home.

* * *

Daisy has to spend a full day and night at the Institute before she feels well enough to go back to the hospital. It’s not exactly pleasant. Melanie is terrified of whatever it was that made Jon do that to himself, though she tries to hide it, and Basira…

Basira’s been taking a lot of meetings with Elias. And while she doesn’t dismiss Daisy’s concerns out of hand, she doesn’t heed them either.

“We  _ need _ good information,” she’d said, frustration plain in her voice. “We don’t even know for sure that his injuries were self-inflicted. What if it was those two hunters? They could be after the rest of us!”

“They wouldn’t have stopped with just the eyes,” Daisy had said. “If it was them, Jon’d be dead, not just injured.” But Basira hadn’t seemed convinced, and Daisy had let the subject drop.

When she makes it back to the hospital, she’s actually looking forward to seeing Martin. Gloomy and chronically nervous though he is, he’s surprisingly good company. She remembers that he used to be talkative; while he’s no social butterfly nowadays, he has made pleasant idle conversation over lunch once or twice, and she could use the distraction to take her mind off her concerns about what Basira’s doing.

When she reaches the hospital room, though, she’s met with a surprisingly cold stare, and no good-morning greeting. Immediately, she looks to the machines around Jon—but no, there’s no change there. Nothing’s suddenly gone wrong. So why…?

Daisy turns back to Martin, who’s found something very interesting to look at on the floor.  _ Afraid, _ the blood murmurs.  _ Of you. _

She crosses the room and presses her forehead against the cold glass of the window. Quiet, she reminds herself. Listen to the quiet.

When her thoughts are her own again, she turns back around. Martin is still deliberately looking away. More to the point, though, he still looks nervous, even without the siren call of the blood coloring Daisy’s perception. He’s hunched up, trying to make himself look smaller, and there’s tension in his hands and shoulders. 

She supposes that she could wait and see if this passes. But if silence and distance were likely to help him, she never would have started talking to him, when he’d shown up at the hospital that first day.

“Everything all right?” she asks.

He shrugs one shoulder, still looking away. 

“Anything I should know? It’s not something to do with Jon, is it?”

He shakes his head.

“Then what—?”

“I don’t  _ understand _ this,” he snaps, still looking down. His voice is clearer and stronger than it’s been, but it’s also unsteady. “You thought Jon was a monster and tried to kill him, and now the two of you are friends. You threatened to  _ frame _ me, for  _ murder, _ and now we’re just—having pleasant conversations over lunch every day. I  _ know _ that—that a lot of stuff has changed,” he adds, when Daisy tries to interrupt. “And sure, you have  _ seemed _ pretty different. But you’re just, just acting like everything’s normal, and it’s  _ not.  _ I can’t—I don’t  _ get _ it.” His voice turns almost plaintive at the end, as if he’s begging her to make sense of it for him. He still hasn’t looked up.

Daisy walks over to her chair. Martin tenses as she approaches, but relaxes minutely when she scoots it towards herself—and away from him—by about a foot before dropping heavily into it. “I’m sorry,” she says.

Martin’s eyes flick up, then down, under his furrowed brow. “I don’t—”

“You don’t need my sympathy, I know, I know. That’s not what this is about. I…” She sighs. “I’m sorry that I did those things. That I hurt him, and scared you, and contributed to… this. And that I hurt… all the other people I hurt, when I was still a Hunter.”

“You already said you were sorry,” Martin mutters.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“...No.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life. I was cruel to you, and you did nothing to deserve it, and it was wrong. I’ll—I’m doing everything I can to make sure I never do anything like that again. To you, or anyone else.” Daisy clasps her hands together in her lap. She hopes she sounds frank, rather than indifferent or sarcastic. She’s never had a particular talent for words.

Martin scratches at his ear, shoulders still tight. “It’s okay,” he mutters.

Daisy hesitates. “It’s all right if it’s not, you know,” she says eventually. “I’m not gonna—be offended, or anything, if you decide you’re still upset. You don’t have to still talk to me, if you don’t want to. I mean, you should talk to  _ someone,  _ I think, but—” She shrugs. “Doesn’t have to be me.”

A long, long silence follows. Daisy glances furtively over at Martin several times, trying to figure out if she should say anything else, but his gaze is distant and unfocused, and his jaw is working like he keeps trying to say something but deciding otherwise at the last minute.

After what feels like at least half an hour, he finally says, “I don’t know if I’m still upset.” Then his shoulders slump, and he runs a hand through his hair. “Don’t think I am, though. You barely feel like the same person.” 

Daisy shuffles in her seat. “It’s not—it  _ was _ me, though.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s  _ still _ you, though, does it? I mean—” He cuts himself off, looks away. “I mean, you said it yourself, you’re not going to do… that stuff, anymore. You don’t  _ want _ to. Right?”

“...It’s more complicated than wanting or not wanting,” says Daisy, after a few moments. “But, yeah. I… I  _ choose _ not to do that anymore. I don’t want… to be the kind of person, thing, whatever—that does that, now that I have the option.”

Martin nods to himself. “All right, then.”

Daisy blinks at him. “Really?”

He shrugs, still looking a touch uncomfortable. “I’m not… good at change. I don’t like surprises, and I  _ really  _ don’t like feeling as though I’ve missed something important.” His gaze flicks up to the hospital bed, then down again. “It helps. Knowing that you’re making a—a  _ choice _ to be different. That it’s a new normal and not…”

“Not just a passing fancy?”

He gives a tiny little chuckle—the first laugh Daisy has heard from him in over a year. “Not the words I’d use, but yeah. And…” He bites his lip, pauses for almost a whole minute. “Thank you. For, um, for apologizing. Again, I mean.”

Daisy’s hands twist in her lap of their own accord. “No need to thank me,” she says. “Really.”

“Even so.”

“You’re welcome, then,” she says, keeping her voice quiet and serious. But when Martin peeps over, a shy little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, she smiles back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: disordered/unhealthy eating habits, dissociation.
> 
> Got a favorite part? Let me know!


	4. Change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end notes.

To fill the empty air on days when Daisy is at the Institute, Martin starts reading to Jon. It’s still strange—nearly uncomfortably so—but not as much as talking to him as if they’re having an extremely one-sided conversation. Ages ago, during one of their lunches outside of the Institute (after Prentiss but before Leitner), Jon had mentioned offhandedly that he usually gets bored of an author’s style after just a few books. So Martin digs out his old library card and downloads half a dozen ebooks onto his phone, every single one by someone different. 

Some don’t end up working out, at least not as reading-out-loud material— _Spinning Silver_ reduces him to tears so effectively that he temporarily loses the ability to speak, and the next day he’s still so discombobulated that Daisy asks if he’s all right—but it’s nice to feel like he’s sharing this with Jon, like he’s really spending time with him, even if Jon can’t say anything back.

And, miracle of miracles, Jon does seem to be getting better. Martin nearly has a heart attack when, one morning, Jon opens his scarred eyelids in response to one of the nurses fiddling with his IV. For one wild moment, Martin thinks the wait is over. But Jon just lies there, transparent plastic prostheses staring sightlessly at the ceiling, and then his eyelids drift shut again. (The nurse assures him this is normal. It’s a good sign, but an early one. It’ll be a while yet before Jon wakes.)

As Jon gets stronger, so too does the tentative friendship between Martin and Daisy. It continues to take root, becoming less and less fragile with every passing day, every casual exchange of words, every shared half-smile. They have a matching taste for gallows humor, which he had expected but seems to surprise her. And there’s a gentleness to Daisy, an appreciation for the rhythm and poignance of everyday life, that Martin never would have expected.

They start sharing more than just casual conversation, too. Martin finds himself confiding his worries about whether or not Jon will still want to be in his life after Martin had turned down his plea so harshly, and while he’s not sure he believes that Jon is “completely smitten, like, it’s _actually_ ridiculous,” he lets Daisy assuage his fears anyway. In return, he listens to Daisy’s halting explanation of the never-quite-defined thing between her and Basira. And he provides a shoulder for her to lean sadly on, the day she tells him that she’s afraid it’s slowly breaking apart in a way she can’t figure out how to stop, fracturing under the weight of Basira’s increasingly worrying behavior and Daisy’s own inability to confront her over it. 

They even tell each other, in bits and pieces, about the private tragedies that had first set them—however indirectly—on a collision course with the Institute, though they carefully avoid talking about the Institute itself. It’s more cathartic than Martin had expected it would be; ever since he was forced to confront the truth about his mother’s disdain, he’s kept it close to his chest, not brave enough to confide in anyone else. But once the story’s told, he feels lighter, somehow, and he suspects Daisy feels the same, the day she first tells him about a long-gone boy named Calvin.

It can’t all be silver lining, though; there are still thunderclouds on the horizon. Even as Jon improves, Daisy gets sicker. It would’ve been nice, if the new ease between them could have heralded a return to their previous breakfast-and-lunch arrangement. But she has to return to the Institute after only three days, and then after only two, and then she can only manage to visit the hospital every other day. And even that seems like a bit of a stretch—the shadows under her eyes are getting deeper, and she’s still losing weight, bit by bit.

Martin fusses. He’s very aware that he’s fussing, but he can’t seem to stop. Daisy is rapidly becoming a true friend, now that all the hurt and confusion between them is out in the open, and fading into the past. Luckily for him, Daisy isn’t easily irritated. He can tell she doesn’t quite know what to do with the solicitous questions, the offers to fetch things and hold doors and run errands, but she doesn’t snap and she doesn’t tell him to stop. She just smiles, tired and a little sad, and says things like _that’s okay_ and _no thanks I’m fine_ and _it’s all right I’ll get it myself._

He tries not to push, tries not to make a nuisance of himself, tries not to stunt this camaraderie growing between them. But it frightens him, watching her waste away. And it _hurts,_ to stand by and do nothing. It hurts in a horribly familiar way, even without an extra helping of scorn salting the wounds.

At first, Martin thinks that his gradually-building sick exhaustion, the churning in his gut that never seems to go away, is a result of his worry over Daisy. (And Jon too, of course.) But then, one dreary afternoon while Daisy is away, Martin finishes a chapter of his book, stands up to stretch, and nearly falls over in a dizzy spell, just like the dozens he’s seen Daisy suffer through. And he realizes, very suddenly, that while he may no longer work in the archives, he is still—technically, on paper—the assistant to the Director of the Magnus Institute.

Shit.

* * *

Now that Jon is unavailable, it’s difficult for Daisy to find soothing company at the Institute. She manages, though, because she has to: she sits off to the side while Basira tacks things up on corkboards, pores over boxes, and mutters to herself; she lurks quietly in corners while Melanie kills hour after hour with deliberate indolence. 

Every now and again, she considers finding a breakroom in some other part of the building, or even just sitting in the lobby and listening to Rosie type—but no. The rest of the Institute doesn’t know what’s happening here, and they’re dangerously close to the line of fire. She has a sneaking suspicion that if any of them were to realize the true nature of the archives, they’ll be just as trapped as Daisy, unable to quit. That is, if they’re not stuck already. So she doesn’t involve them.

More than anything, she wishes she didn’t have to come back here, that she could take some files with her to the hospital and spend all her time there. But that would probably necessitate doing actual work, and she’s pretty sure that Melanie has the right of it, skiving off while still hanging around the building. So she takes it one day at a time, and gets away as often as she can stand.

Today, she wishes she hadn’t come, and damn the consequences.

“He _still_ in there?” Melanie asks tersely, jerking her chin towards the Head Archivist’s office. 

Daisy nods, and squeezes the stress ball she’d found in one of the desks so hard that for a moment she’s sure it’s about to pop.

“What does Basira think she’s doing?” Melanie grumbles. “Doesn’t she _realize_ how bad an idea—?”

Daisy doesn’t want to think about this. “Probably,” she mutters, hoping that will stop this line of conversation. 

No such luck. “Every day, I’m less and less sure of that, you know,” says Melanie. “I know you two are close, but—”

Daisy shakes her head, as if that will stop the sound of Melanie’s voice, silence the words eating away at her heart. Basira won’t _listen,_ which means that Daisy can’t actually do anything about any of this, so the only thing she can do is hope that Basira knows what she’s doing, that her instincts will lead her right when the moment comes.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the sound of the door opening. But it’s not the door to the office—that one is still resolutely, worryingly shut. The open door is the one that leads to the corridor, and the person on the threshold is—

“Martin?” says Melanie, sounding flabbergasted.

It probably wouldn’t be visible to anyone else, but after spending so much time around him, watching for his reactions, Daisy sees the way his shoulders pull in slightly, the twitch in his hands as he keeps himself from covering his ears. Melanie’s voice hasn’t changed in volume, but Daisy’s mind had switched over to being-around-Martin-mode as soon as she’d seen him, and the noise is suddenly almost painful.

“What are you doing here?” Daisy asks, keeping her voice low.

Martin fiddles with the cuff of his jacket. “I didn’t exactly quit,” he says.

Melanie scowls, and Daisy can tell she’s about to make some cutting remark about people being cryptic or ominous, or maybe cast aspersions on Martin’s work ethic. Either way, she can see the trajectory of the conversation veering off in a direction that’s sure to end with Martin overwhelmed and miserable.

So Daisy says, quickly, “You’ve started feeling sick, too, then?”

He nods, shuffling his feet in the doorway.

Melanie stares at him with narrowed eyes. “Hang on. Daisy says you’ve been hanging around the hospital. Right?” Both Daisy and Martin nod. “The whole time?”

“Pretty much,” says Martin, voice still very soft.

“And you’ve been fine until now?” Melanie’s expression has passed skeptical and is verging on suspicious.

“Not… really?” Martin scratches at his arm uncomfortably. “I haven’t been feeling… much of anything, recently. I’ve probably been sick for a while and just… didn’t notice.”

Melanie stares at him for several seconds longer. Then she shrugs, reaching into her pocket for her phone. “Whatever. S’not like _I’m_ really working, anyway. Though…” She puts the phone away again, suddenly thoughtful. “Don’t suppose Lukas told you why Jon—?”

Whatever Melanie had been about to ask is interrupted when the door to the office abruptly swings open, and Elias strides out. 

The change in mood is instant and palpable; the almost-cordial atmosphere immediately turns into something colder. Melanie’s eyebrows snap together, and she stands and walks out of the room without a word. Martin’s shoulders tense, and his expression turns closed-off and impatient. He doesn’t look afraid—more annoyed, really—but Daisy suspects it might be a mask. She herself has to rein in a spark of instinctive anger, the old, half-buried urge to find a knife or a gun or _something_ and give chase. 

Elias casts his gaze about the room, his typical cold smile in place. But there’s something slightly _off_ about it. He looks… stressed, somehow. He’s seemed ever-so-slightly off-kilter ever since Jon had wound up in hospital, but this is more pronounced than it’s ever been. 

Before Daisy has a chance to puzzle out what it might mean, Elias is speaking. “It’s good to see you again, Martin.”

Martin just glares at him.

“Ah. Not quite ready to be off of bereavement leave yet, then? I suppose it _is_ a touch unreasonable of me to expect you to come back to work while Jon is still in hospital. I’ll give you another few months.” Elias goes over to the door, and Martin is forced to step back into the corridor to avoid colliding with him. “Allow me to walk you out.”

“Wh—?” Daisy starts to ask.

Elias turns his head to look at her over his shoulder. “Unless I am very much mistaken, you have work to attend to, Daisy. Work that you are several weeks behind on, in fact. I suggest you begin catching up.” With that, he sweeps away down the corridor, shepherding a confused and protesting Martin in front of him.

Daisy blinks at the door, anger at Elias displaced by puzzlement. 

When she finally shakes off her confusion and goes to ask Basira what she was talking to Elias about, she can hear the faint sound of steady speech from inside the office. Basira’s reading a statement, then. Daisy isn’t in the mood to deal with that, but she does want company, so she heads off in search of Melanie.

But she’s only ten steps down the corridor before exhaustion and nausea force her to retreat into the archives again. She sits down at the nearest of the assistants’ desks, suddenly shaky all over. She’s felt ill while skipping work for the last several weeks, but it’s never made her unable to leave the _room_ before.

Daisy digs out her phone and tries to text Martin, but her hands shake too badly to use the tiny keyboard. When the phone finally slips from her hands and onto the floor, she doesn’t reach for it.

Instead, she puts her head between her knees as her fear and fury rip into each other. Elias’s stupid smug face pops into her mind’s eye, and she has to press her palms against her ears to shut out the siren call of the blood. _He did this—I should go find him—tear his throat out—_

Daisy focuses hard on the sound of her own breathing. It’s not as good as focusing on someone else’s, but it’ll have to do for now. At least until she can regroup and figure out what’s happened.

It’s a long time before she feels well enough to uncurl from her chair and try the phone again. In defiance of all laws of physics and common sense, it’s harder to listen to the quiet in a silent room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: implied/referenced (temporary I promise) breakup, isolation
> 
> Got a favorite part? Let me know!


	5. Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings at the end.

Martin does his best to tune out Elias’s presence as he’s escorted back to the front door of the Institute. It’s not until he’s back in Jon’s hospital room that he realizes that he’d gone numb again. 

“Damn it,” Martin mutters under his breath. He’d lasted so long without going foggy, but he’d gone right back under—practically willingly—just because Elias had been annoying him. Tired and piqued, he flops into his armchair, his gaze falling, as usual, on Jon’s unconscious face.

“Hi, Jon,” says Martin, trying to sound less irritable than he feels. “Sorry for the interruption this morning. I wasn’t feeling well, so I had to go back to the Institute.” He thinks over the odd confrontation in the archives, and takes stock of how he’s feeling. “With any luck, though, I won’t have to go back anytime soon, so that’s nice.”

Jon, of course, doesn’t answer. Martin sighs. It’s getting late—he’s going to have to leave soon. He says his goodbyes to Jon, and he’s just stepped out the front door of the hospital when his phone rings. It’s Daisy.

“Hello?” he says.

“Hi, Martin,” says Daisy. She doesn’t sound entirely well.

“Are you all right?”

She laughs mirthlessly. “Well, I’m not sure I can leave the archives anymore, but aside from that—”

“What? Why not?” Martin’s stomach twists.

“No idea,” says Daisy. “Well, I mean, Elias, presumably. He said something about getting back to work, and then I couldn’t leave the basement. I had to actually re-organize some files before I started feeling better. I don’t know how he did it, or why he picked today, but… I think he’s trying to cut me off from you. Or you off from me. Or... _something.”_

“Shit,” says Martin.

“Yeah,” says Daisy.

There’s a pause while they both digest the change in Daisy’s situation. Finally, Martin says, “I’m sorry.”

“What? Why?”

“Whatever he did—I think it must’ve been because I was there.” Martin presses a hand over his eyes. “And now you can’t leave.”

“Well, maybe, but that’s not your fault.” Daisy’s voice is utterly certain, without an ounce of recrimination.

“But—”

“If he did it because you were there, and you were feeling sick from being away too long, then it was just a matter of time,” says Daisy, in a tone that brooks no argument. 

“I guess,” Martin mumbles.

“Do you think—” Daisy cuts herself off suddenly.

“What is it?”

There’s a pause before she continues. “Did he do anything like that to you? Do you think you _could_ come back to the archives, if you wanted to?”

Martin considers it for a moment. “Not sure. I guess I could give it a try.”

There’s another pause.

“Do you want me to try now?” Martin asks.

“If you don’t mind?” says Daisy. “I… Basira’s wrapped up in research, and I don’t know where Melanie is, and… and using my phone is starting to make me feel the same way I did when I tried to leave, so—”

“Oh!” Martin jolts up out of his chair as though shocked. “Oh, of course, I’ll be right there!”

Half an hour later, Martin sits down on the front steps of the Institute and calls Daisy back.

“Hello?”

“I can’t get inside,” he says. “Can’t even get close enough to touch the front door. I’m sorry.”

“Damn.” She sighs. “Thanks for trying, though.”

“What are we going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s been...” Martin groans and rubs his face. “It’s been helping me. Being around… someone who gets it. And I think it’s been helping you too. Right?”

“It has, yeah.”

“I’m feeling… better than I have,” says Martin. “More myself than since before the Unknowing. I don’t…” He swallows. “I want to be there for Jon when he wakes up. I don’t have a lot of things keeping me going, right now, and that’s still the main one. But… I don’t think it’s the _only_ one anymore.” He smiles wryly. “Your plan worked.”

Daisy chuckles on the other end of the line, but her voice is serious when she says, “I’m glad.”

“I don’t want to get worse again,” he says quietly. “And I don’t… I don’t want you to…”

“I’m going to keep getting sicker,” says Daisy. “I might not ever stop.”

Martin swallows hard. “Maybe you could slow down, though?”

“Maybe.” Daisy doesn’t sound convinced.

“Was it… was it not helping you? Eating together, I mean, and the, the quiet?”

“It was!” Daisy says hastily. “I just meant, I don’t know if there’s a way to get out of this.”

Martin hesitates. “You probably won’t be able to leave the Institute for lunch or anything. Right?”

“Right…?”

“Do you think you could leave outside of working hours?”

“It’s already past the time I would normally leave,” says Daisy, with a crackly sigh. “I’m not sure there’s going to be such a thing as _outside of work hours_ for me anymore.”

Martin ponders.

“Martin? You still there?”

“I have an idea,” says Martin before he can lose his nerve. Then his brain catches up with what he’s about to propose and he immediately tries to backtrack. “It’s—well, it’s kind of weird, actually, I dunno if you’ll even be interested. It might not even work.”

“There’s not a lot I wouldn’t try right now,” says Daisy.

“I think Peter owns my apartment block,” says Martin.

“Pardon?”

“I think Peter Lukas—or one of the Lukases, anyway—owns my apartment block,” Martin repeats. “I moved, right when I started working with Peter. It was one of his instructions, early on, for—isolating myself? Moving into a new place and not introducing myself to the neighbors, that is. But the new place I moved into—I mean, there’s no way it costs as little as I’m paying for it. It’s absurdly big for a place that only has one bedroom.”

“And this is relevant because…?”

“I’m not working with Peter anymore,” says Martin. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got an eviction notice soon—”

“Get to the point, Blackwood,” says Daisy, a touch exasperated, but fond underneath.

Martin takes a deep breath. “I need to get a new flat. Besides the whole Lukas thing, I also… I don’t want to live alone anymore. I don’t think it’s good for me. And... And maybe now you have to be at the Institute all hours of the day, but—I mean, you only signed an employment contract, right? There’s no _way_ it can control where you live.”

“I think it can do whatever Elias wants it to do,” says Daisy, a touch of frustration breaking through.

“It’s an _employment contract,”_ says Martin. “The whole point is that it’s—is that it’s something real, with meaning, right? I handled a lot of the paperwork when I was… when I was working with Peter, and it was all pretty much mundane. Including the contracts. There weren’t any—any _weird_ restrictions or conditions or anything. I mean, the director can demand overtime, sure, but deciding where you live is just… No way. There’s no way that being an Institute employee could prevent you from moving house. It doesn’t make _sense.”_

Daisy is quiet for several moments. Martin bites his tongue to stop himself from filling in the silence with additional, unnecessary reassurances.

At long last, she says, “You’re asking me to move in with you. Right? That’s what’s happening?”

“Well, find a flat with me, not move into my current place, but yeah,” he says. “Is that… is that okay?”

There’s another long pause before Daisy says, “Yes. I… I think that’s a good idea.” She lets out a long, shuddering sigh, and her next words are wobbly, as if she’s holding back tears. “Can we—can we talk more tomorrow? I just—I’m _really_ tired, and I need—I need some time. Sorry.”

“Sure,” says Martin. “Did I say—?”

“It’s fine,” says Daisy, choked and terse. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.” She hangs up without another word.

Martin blinks at his phone. That… was odd. He begins his lonely trek home, trying to ignore the sick feeling of _you-hurt-her-feelings-somehow-you-clumsy-oaf._ But later that evening, as he lies awake, trying to will himself into unconsciousness, his phone buzzes.

**Daisy:** Sorry for hanging up. Not anything you said. I’ll explain tmrw. Good night

The chill ebbs, a little.

**Martin:** Okay :)

**Martin:** Good night

* * *

Daisy wakes up the next morning on the cot that Jon doesn’t sleep on anymore, and winces as she rubs her now chronically sore back. _I wish I had a real bed,_ she thinks idly, which brings the whole conversation from the previous night rushing back.

She has to put her head between her knees, then. Because, well… 

Because she’d assumed, hadn’t she? Before the coffin, she’d assumed that the next time she’d be moving, it would be into a place she would share with Basira. She hadn’t _fantasized_ about it, or anything like that. Had deliberately stopped herself from doing so, in fact, when she had been trapped in the coffin with no hope of escape; it only made it worse, to imagine a life outside of the darkness and the crushing weight. But once she’d made it out—once she’d accepted that it wasn’t a dream, wasn’t a fantasy, wasn’t a hallucination—she’d gone right on back to assuming. Even with everyone stuck living in the archives, even with Basira growing more and more distant, listening less and less, that distant inevitability of the two of them and a nice little one-bedroom flat somewhere hadn’t gone away. 

But Daisy needs support. Needs someone who will remind her to eat, needs a helping hand for when she inevitably becomes too ill to manage without. Needs, more than anything else, a sympathetic, _patient_ ear.

She needs, in short, to be cared for. And Basira, for all that Daisy adores her, for all the years they’ve spent side-by-side, isn’t going to do that. Not anytime soon, anyway. And god _damn,_ that hurts. 

She breathes in and out a few times, scrubs a hand across her face, and digs out her phone. Luckily, her hands are marginally steadier than yesterday, and the nausea hasn’t yet set in.

**Daisy:** Hey

**Daisy:** Do you have time to talk?

She only waits a minute or two before her phone buzzes with a reply.

**Martin:** Sure

**Martin:** Everything all right?

Rather than trying to compose an answer on the tiny keyboard, she makes a phone call.

“Hi, Daisy, everything all right?” Martin asks immediately.

The corner of Daisy’s mouth twitches. Maybe that’s why Jon likes him so much—the persistence verging on stubbornness. They’re certainly a matched pair. “Yes, I’m fine,” she answers. “Sorry about hanging up yesterday, I just…” She lets her head fall back against the wall with a soft _clunk._ “For a long time, I had an idea of who my next flatmate was likely to be, and I was wrong. It just. It got to me, all of a sudden. That’s all.”

There’s a beat of silence on the other end of the line, and then Martin says, “Ah. I… I’m sorry, Daisy.”

“S’all right,” she says. “It’s a good plan. Getting—getting a place together, I mean. As long as you don’t mind that I’m… you know. Ill.”

“Of course I don’t _mind,”_ says Martin. “It’s not something for me to, to _put up with.”_

Daisy huffs a little sigh. “That didn’t come out quite right. I mean—I don’t want to put too much on you, or make things worse for you. I’m…” She rubs her face. It’s frustrating enough to admit it to herself; saying the words out loud is _hard,_ even though she knows they’re true and need saying. “I’m going to need—help. More than just company, I mean. I—It’s hard. I’m tired a lot. If it weren’t for Melanie and Basira, I’d be worse off than I am. And I haven’t… I haven’t been asking for all the help I need from them, honestly.”

“I know,” says Martin. “I… I do have some experience with that sort of thing. Not, ah, not exactly the same, but… yeah.”

“It might get bad,” says Daisy quietly. “It probably _will_ get bad.”

Martin takes a deep breath. “Listen. As long as you don’t call me names, or, or tell me that I’m stupid for forgetting things, then I’ll be fine.”

Daisy blinks a few times. “Yeah, I think I can do that,” she says. “Or—not do that, I mean.”

“Then it’s settled,” says Martin, with artificial cheeriness. “Shall I start looking? Any preferences?”

“I’ll settle for four walls, a roof, and a landlord who isn’t a cartoon villain,” says Daisy. “Tall order, I know.”

Martin snorts, and Daisy finds herself smiling—a little sadly, sure, but still smiling—as they begin the discussion in earnest.

* * *

It takes almost a month to find anywhere suitable, and it’s a miracle it doesn’t take longer, due to a combination of their frankly pitiful salaries, London being ridiculously expensive, and their limited opportunities to talk. 

Texting ends up being a total non-starter—Daisy’s hands have apparently developed a tremor when she’s not actively working—and the Institute’s email system mysteriously loses every single one of their messages to each other, so they resort to daily phone calls instead. Even this doesn’t end up being a perfect solution; Daisy continues to report feel ill after talking on the phone too long, and Martin notices the same after a week or so. It’s not as bad if they call in the early mornings or late at night rather than during the day, though, so they both start keeping odd hours. Martin starts to get regular headaches from sleep deprivation, and he suspects Daisy isn’t faring much better, but it’s obvious they both need this lifeline, double-edged sword that it is.

And as if the search for a new flat wasn’t complicated enough, they find themselves with hard-to-answer questions about how much space they’ll need. It seems likely that Jon will want to move in with them once he’s out of hospital, but neither of them can make that decision for him. Since he’s not exactly in a fit state to ask at the moment, and won’t be for some time yet, their plans have to work even if it’s just the two of them long-term.

And the cherry on top, as Daisy points out to Martin during one of their phone calls, is that they have location restrictions as well. They should be somewhere not too far from the Institute, so that she—and later Martin, once his “bereavement leave” is over—can commute without too much difficulty. Though, oddly enough, she includes Jon in the group as well.

“Yes, but—Jon quit,” says Martin.

“What?” asks Daisy, as if she’d misheard.

“Jon’s not going to be working at the Institute anymore,” says Martin. “He quit, remember?”

“When? _How?”_

Martin blinks down at his phone. “A while ago? It’s why he’s in hospital?”

“He’s in hospital because he—Wait. Are you saying that—that the way you quit the Institute is—?”

“Uh, yes,” says Martin. “You didn’t _know?”_

“No! How did _you_ know?” There’s a muffled _thump_ from the other end, as if Daisy had suddenly sat down hard.

“He told me,” says Martin. “Asked me to resign along with him, actually.” He shakes his head, as if that could clear the lingering guilt from the air around him. “He didn’t tell any of you? Didn’t even leave a note?”

“No, nothing,” says Daisy. After a beat, she adds, “Well—not as far as we know, anyway. Though if he’d left a note, I _think_ we’d have found it by now? Unless he put it somewhere weird. Or someone else got there first.” Another pause. “I guess it makes sense. I can’t believe none of us connected the dots.”

“Well, now you know,” says Martin, feeling inane. Then he frowns. “Wait. You’re not planning on—?”

“No,” Daisy says hastily. “Not yet, anyway? I—I’m _really_ not keen on going back to the nightmares, and as long as I keep, well, ‘working’ here, it’s not actually making me get worse. I’d rather not—I’d rather not put myself under _more_ stress, right now, even if it would theoretically help down the line.”

“Probably for the best,” says Martin.

“You?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It depends on how things go after Jon is better, I guess.”

“How’s he doing, by the way?” Daisy asks, audibly brightening.

“Better!” says Martin, a fond smile stealing across his face. “He’s stopped freaking out when he wakes up—so to speak—and I’m pretty sure he recognizes me? I mean, we haven’t exactly had a conversation, but he seems to like it when I’m there.”

“That’s good, right?” says Daisy. “That’s _proper_ progress.”

“Yeah, it is,” says Martin. “Full recovery is very likely, apparently.”

“Good,” says Daisy. “God, that’s so good to hear.” 

“Yeah,” says Martin. The two of them sit in companionable silence for a little while. 

“Listen, I should tell everyone else about the whole quitting thing,” says Daisy eventually. “But—that place you were talking about, the two-bedroom on the ground floor? I think we should go for it.”

“You sure a two-bedroom will have enough space?” Martin asks anxiously. “I don’t want to assume—what if Jon—”

“If he doesn’t like it, we can figure something else out,” says Daisy. “But, Martin? If Jon doesn’t want to share a room with you, I’ll eat my shoe. And once that’s done, you and I can room together, or he can move in with me, or we can section off part of the living room with a screen or a bookshelf or something to make a third bedroom. It’ll be _fine.”_

“Okay,” says Martin.

* * *

As it turns out, Martin has surprisingly few possessions he cares about enough to bring with him to the new place; his current—now previous, he supposes—flat had come pre-furnished, all sleek and utilitarian, washed-out and pastel, and he hadn’t brought much with him from the one before. He packs up his clothes, his books (choked with dust; he hasn’t opened any of them since before he moved here), and all the other odds and ends he’s barely touched in the past year. The total amounts to one suitcase and not quite a dozen boxes. 

It all seems impossibly small and lonesome, sitting in the middle of the bare living room of his and Daisy’s new flat, but he stoically reminds himself that it won’t be that way for long. Just a little longer, and then living alone in a too-large flat will be a thing of the past.

Since Daisy is still stuck at the Institute all day, Martin supervises the furniture deliveries. It’s not much, honestly; he and Daisy had agreed on getting only the bare necessities to start, since they’re not exactly rolling in funds. (Daisy’s old cash reserves help, but they’re not limitless. And besides, both she and Martin are more than a little uncomfortable dipping into those.) But the table and the chairs, the secondhand sofa, the mismatched bookshelves, the two narrow beds—they help, just by filling in the space.

Martin finishes unpacking long before he’s due to meet Daisy, and spends the remaining time stacking and re-stacking the empty boxes. It had felt too presumptuous to get any furniture specifically for Jon before they’d even asked him to move in, so there’s nothing but cardboard to mark out the space where he will—hopefully—be sleeping before too long. Martin outlines a space in his room, then in Daisy’s, then tries to figure out how to make Daisy’s living-room idea work, and before he knows it, it’s time to head out the door.

Daisy meets him on the Institute steps an hour after dusk. To his surprise, Melanie is there too, as is Georgie. Basira is conspicuously absent.

“Hi,” he says cautiously, once he’s within earshot. The Institute, rising above the scene, makes his skin prickle—not entirely due to nerves, he thinks. He’s not supposed to go to work, and this is cutting it a bit close for comfort.

Daisy hangs back for an instant, then abruptly steps forward and wraps her arms around Martin’s shoulders. It takes him a minute to remember what he’s supposed to do, but then he (gently, carefully) returns the embrace. Daisy’s arms—and her whole body, really—are bony, and trembly, and while she doesn’t squeeze tight, her hands are like claws against his back. Martin doesn’t mind, though. It’s been so long. It’s been so, so long.

When she finally pulls back, her eyes are wet, and there’s a damp spot on the shoulder of Martin’s shirt. He has to wipe his own eyes on his sleeve. “Ready to go, then?” he asks through a tear-thick throat.

Daisy nods, and makes for the hired car, but before they can leave, Melanie says, “Wait. Martin?”

He turns to face her. “Yes?”

“Did…” She bites her lip. Struggling to find words, probably. “Did it work? Did he really quit?”

“Yeah,” says Martin.

“You’re sure?”

“Elias pretty much told me so,” he says. “Said he’d reinstated himself as director because Peter let ‘his Archivist’ resign.”

Melanie nods, resolve hardening her expression. “Thanks,” she says. Then she turns abruptly and goes to say something quiet to Georgie.

Martin turns away. He has a feeling he already knows the gist of that conversation, but it’s not his business. He just hopes it goes more smoothly for Melanie than for Jon.

Daisy is waiting by the car. She doesn’t have a dozen boxes, just a suitcase, which Martin lifts into the boot for her. “Ready to go home?” he says, marveling even as he says the words.

“Ready,” she says. 

She steals glances back towards the Institute long after it’s disappeared around the corner, and Martin’s pretty sure he knows the gist of that, too. But for the first time in an entire _month,_ her shoulder is bony and warm and solid against Martin’s, and when they get back to the flat—back _home—_ they are both too relieved at the company for any loneliness to creep in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: (canon-typical) allusions to past child emotional abuse
> 
> Tell me your favorite line, if you like :)


	6. Reconciliation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops late upload. In my defense, time is fake.
> 
> Content warnings at the end.

It’s odd how quickly living with Martin becomes Daisy’s new normal.

He’s always awake when she leaves for work and when she gets home, which is surprising, because she could swear that some days _she’s_ not awake for either; she leaves before the crack of dawn, and never returns before sunset. She suspects that Martin’s taken to catnapping during the mornings or afternoons, the better to spend time with her. She would tell him to knock it off and get a proper sleep schedule if she didn’t suspect he needs the company just as much as she does.

In any case, her work schedule is patently ridiculous, especially since she continues to feel as though a strong wind would blow her down. But after only three days of breakfast and dinner at home in their still-nearly-bare kitchen, she’s no longer having trouble cleaning her plate, and after a week, she’s sleeping through the night. 

“It’s not _real_ improvement, I don’t think,” she remarks as they clean up the kitchen one evening—him standing at the sink with the dishes, her sitting in a chair as she dries them. “It’s more that I’m back to where I would be, if I hadn’t been missing meals and sleeping on that awful cot every night.” 

She is, unfortunately, still declining. But it’s slower now, at least. Slower, even, than it had been, back when they’d first started keeping each other company at Jon’s side. And meanwhile, time continues to pass.

Daisy acquires a cane, and is surprised at how much it helps with her balance. She scatters a dozen of the most well-cushioned folding chairs she can get her hands on around the flat, and figures out how to make a variety of household chores comfortable to do while sitting. She begins to seriously look into the possibility of acquiring a wheelchair. 

(Jon mumbles a slightly garbled but definitely intelligible _hello Martin_ one morning, and Martin relays the good news over dinner. Melanie quits the Institute, leaving only Daisy and Basira down in the archives. Basira… continues not to listen.)

(Everything would be _so much easier_ if Basira would listen. Well. Maybe not everything. But it would certainly make Daisy feel better.)

One afternoon, a week or two after the move, Daisy has an unusually hard day at work. Not that any of them are easy—the horrid hours alone are enough to render the job exhausting, regardless of how little effort she’s actually putting in—but this one had been particularly hard. Basira has taken to discussing statements with Daisy once she’s done reading them, and it’s hard to listen to. Hard to watch, too; Basira is always tired afterwards, with too-bright eyes. 

This particular statement had been especially grueling. It had been an unusual one—Desolation, Basira had told her, but with no fire, no scorch marks, and seemingly no connection to the Lightless Flame. Worse yet, the man seemingly responsible for the whole gruesome mess is in London, and easy enough to find online. As Basira points out, in a much-too-casual tone of voice.

“No,” says Daisy.

“It’s all right,” says Basira, in what’s probably supposed to be a soothing tone. “I understand. I know you need this, and I won’t be mad, I promise.”

“Stop it,” Daisy whispers.

“He _deserves_ it,” says Basira, as if she hadn’t interrupted. “He’s a _monster._ Come on, Daisy, it’s win-win! He stops hurting people, and you—”

“And I _start,”_ Daisy snaps, and stumbles out of the room on fawn’s legs.

She finds herself curled up in Document Storage—Jon’s old haunt, become her old haunt, become a sterile storage room once again. She wishes, with a sudden and vicious intensity, that she could go home. Wishes, just as desperately, that her new home included Basira.

“God damn it,” she whispers, wiping her face. Then she pulls out her phone with trembling hands.

“Daisy?” Martin asks as soon as he picks up. “Is everything all right?”

 _“No,”_ she says. “No, I’m not—I want to go _home.”_

“It’s going to be okay,” he says. “Just a few more hours, and then you can—”

She can hear the difference in his voice, the way it turns gentle and soothing, as if trying to calm a spooked animal. Just like Basira had sounded. It makes Daisy’s skin itch. “Stop it,” she gasps. “Stop, that’s not—Don’t. Just… can we talk about something, I dunno, normal?”

“Isn’t it going to make you sick, to keep talking?”

“Don’t care,” she says. “Please?”

“Sure,” he says, cautious but no longer cloying. “Um. I started writing poetry again?”

“Again? Did you stop?”

“Oh—I guess I never really went into detail, did I,” he says with a nervous little laugh, the one that means he’s self-conscious and trying—badly—to hide it. “Yeah, I did sort of… take a break, a while ago, what with all of this.”

“After the Unknowing?”

“No, actually,” he says. “I mean—I definitely haven’t written anything since then, but, well… even before then, it had kind of slowed down. Being scared all the time’s not exactly, you know, conducive to writing.”

“Oh,” she replies, not knowing quite what else to say but not wanting him to run out of steam.

“But I’ve started again!” he continues, determinedly upbeat. “Haven’t finished anything yet, but a handful of drafts is better than nothing.”

“What have you been writing about?” Daisy asks.

“I dunno,” he says. “A few things. How it felt to move into the flat. This one pigeon that hangs around near the hospital entrance. I tried to write something about being lonely, but… the words just wouldn’t come.” He huffs out a half-laugh. “For the best, probably. I dunno that I’d want anyone else to experience that, even secondhand.”

“Makes sense,” says Daisy, leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes.

“Sorry,” Martin mumbles. “It sounded a lot more interesting in my head.”

“No! No, it is interesting, I’m just—” Daisy pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m tired. But it’s nice to hear. That you’re writing. Again.” Martin doesn’t say anything for a moment or two, so Daisy casts about for something to keep the conversation going. “Do you read a lot of poetry, then?” 

“Some,” he says, warming to the topic. “The Romantics, mostly, and that sort of—style. I don’t—I mean, I don’t read a _lot,_ I was busy most of the time even before all of this, but… yeah.”

“What do you like about it? Or—about them?”

Martin takes a breath and lets it out. “It’ll sound silly,” he warns her.

“Everyone’s got silly hobbies. I won’t judge.”

“Like _you’ve_ ever had a silly hobby,” he scoffs.

“I listen to The Archers,” she shoots back. “Have done for years.”

There’s a pause. “No,” says Martin.

“Yes,” says Daisy. “I put the podcast version on, every morning on my way to work.”

 _“You_ listen to radio soap opera. _You.”_

“Yep.”

There’s another pause. “All right,” says Martin. “All right, I concede. Um.” He clears his throat, audibly gathering his thoughts. “I guess I like poetry that’s sort of… expansive? And indirect, I suppose? I like it when I read something and it’s just… like I could get lost in how big the feeling is. Like it’s too, too _important_ to just spell it out, so you have to be metaphorical about it instead.” He sighs. “Again, it sounds better in my head.”

Huh. “That’s your point, though, isn’t it?” says Daisy. “It sounds better when it’s not in plain words, when you’re not trying to explain it.”

Martin gives a startled little laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.” Then a teasing note enters his voice. “All right, your turn. What do you like about The Archers?”

Daisy shrugs her aching shoulders before remembering that she’s on the phone. “I’ve been listening to it for so long, I guess I’m just sort of attached,” she says. “And also… I mean, it’s _always_ there. You never have to wonder, oh, is The Archers on, it just is. Even if everything else is completely upside-down.” She smiles faintly. “When I got back from the coffin, everything was different and, and _horrible—_ it was like everyone was a stranger, even me, except for a person I’d thought of as an enemy, and now he was pretty much my best friend. And—I mean, that was nice and all, but it didn’t make it any less weird. But The Archers was still on, just like clockwork. So I figured, maybe the rest of it would be familiar again soon.” She sniffles. When had this turned into a sad story? “I’m still waiting. For some of it, I mean. But at least not all the new stuff’s bad.”

“That’s good,” Martin says. His voice is carefully gentle again, but he doesn’t sound like he’s talking to a spooked animal anymore. Progress.

There’s a long lapse in the conversation, during which time Daisy listens to the crackling of the line and her own breathing, and tries to ignore the churning building up in her gut. Just a few more minutes, she tells herself. Just a few more minutes before she’ll hang up. Then Martin says, “Speaking of new stuff…”

“Oh?” Something in his tone is familiar. Ah. “Are we having another kitchen adventure?”

“We are,” says Martin primly. “I’m going to try that lentil thing again from last week, only I’m going to get it right this time.”

“It wasn’t bad last time!”

“It was over-salted.”

“It was—yeah, all right. But it wasn’t _bad.”_

“I’m determined to do better than _not bad,”_ says Martin, still playful, but with that familiar stubbornness lurking underneath.

Daisy bites her lip. “You don’t mind, right?”

“Mind what?”

“Being the person in charge of dinner every night?”

“Is this about the dishes again?” Daisy doesn’t answer, and Martin sighs. “It’s okay, Daisy. I really, truly do not mind. If it makes you feel better, I think technically I actually spend less time working than you do.”

“Your work’s harder,” says Daisy.

“Actually, I think it’s _really_ not,” says Martin, and all the air goes out of Daisy’s lungs for a minute because _why why why can’t Basira understand like this too,_ but it’s fine, it’s fine, they’re having a normal conversation and Daisy is being a normal person, and once the sun goes down and it’s fully dark out, she can go home.

“You still there?” asks Martin.

“Yeah,” says Daisy, rubbing her face. “Just looking forward to being done with work.”

* * *

The longer Martin lasts without drifting down into a haze, the more he comes to realize that his life isn’t as unrelentingly awful as it had seemed. To be fair, there’s still a _lot_ of awful in it. But, to his very great surprise, there’s also reason for a fair amount of optimism.

For one thing, Jon’s condition is steadily improving; he’s still drowsy and confused pretty much all of the time, but he can sit up and exchange words with Martin and the nurses. And for another thing, Martin is discovering that housework for two is a lot easier when he’s not responsible for all of it. It’s easier, in some ways, than housework for one; the tasks may be bigger than when he was living on his own, but for the first time in his life, they’ve reduced in number. (And getting a “thank you” afterwards instead of a “do it faster next time” makes an enormous difference, too.)

But the most significant example sneaks up on him. 

The day after Daisy calls him in the middle of work, distraught over something but unwilling to discuss it, she’s weaker and more tired than Martin has ever seen her. And the next day, she looks the same. And the next, and the next, and then it’s been a week and she _hasn’t gotten worse._

He plans to ask her about it once she gets home for the evening, that seventh stable day in a row, but his plan is interrupted by a significant deviation from schedule.

Daisy normally arrives around eight o’clock in the evening, but today she shows up at six, only a little while after Martin himself usually gets home. And, even more unusually, she’s anxious. Vibrating with anxiety, in fact; there’s a tremor in her hands, her shoulders, in her legs. Even after she sits down, her fingers keep worrying over the handle of her recently-acquired cane. 

Martin sets aside the immediate urge to make a fuss, to ask her what’s wrong. Instead, he walks over to the sofa, sits down an arm’s breadth from her, picks up the nearest book on the coffee table, and cracks it open. It’s one of his—a cookbook he’d picked up from the library as part of his quest to learn how to make more than ready meals. Not exactly riveting, but it serves its purpose.

After a few minutes, Daisy crosses her legs, uncrosses them, and then says, “Basira asked me today why I wouldn’t go hunting.”

Martin sets the book aside. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

He’s not looking directly at her, but he can still see her squeeze her eyes shut. “She _asked_ me.”

Martin’s stomach sinks. “Like—?”

“Like _asked_ asked.” Daisy presses the heels of her hands into her eyelids. “So I told her.”

“I’m sorry,” says Martin. “God, I’m—I’m _so_ sorry, do you want—?”

Wordlessly, she leans into his shoulder, hands still pressed against her face. He reaches up and carefully rubs his palm in a circle on her trembling back, making sure not to push too hard. She always flinches when things press too hard on her back or shoulders.

Daisy takes a few ragged breaths, and then balls her hands into fists and presses them into the tops of her knees. “I’m fine,” she says, her voice thin and creaky. 

Martin doesn’t say anything, just keeps moving his hand in a circle.

“At least now maybe she’ll listen to me,” says Daisy, and presses a hand to her mouth to muffle another sob.

“I’m sorry,” says Martin again.

“You know the worst part?” Daisy whispers. “The worst part is that I don’t _want_ her to listen. I don’t want her to have to know what this is like. I—I don’t want her to have to go through this.”

Martin does not squeeze her shoulder, but he does scoot his knee over so that his leg is brushing hers, and silently offers her a tissue from the box on the coffee table. 

Once she’s done blowing her nose, Daisy leans forward, bracing her forehead against her hands and her elbows against her knees. “I shouldn’t have left so early,” she groans. “I feel like _rubbish._ Dunno how I’m going to manage dinner.”

“Come and help me?” says Martin. “Maybe it’ll help your appetite if you’re there while it’s cooking, if you can smell it?”

Daisy shrugs, just a tired little twitch of her shoulders. “Sure,” she says, and allows him to sit her down at the kitchen table and equip her with a vegetable peeler and a stack of carrots.

She does not, in the end, manage more than a slice of toast with a thin scraping of peanut butter on top. But by the time Martin assures her that he can handle the dishes—no really, it’s fine, get some rest—her desolate expression has faded.

The evening is determined to be a strange one, though, because a few minutes after Martin turns off the light in his bedroom, he hears a knock at the front door.

He pulls his blankets tighter, trying to ward off a sudden twinge of worry. Maybe it’s just his imagination? Then he scolds himself for being an idiot and goes to find the light switch.

Daisy meets him in the front room, leaning heavily on the wall, her attention—like his—entirely occupied by the front door. “What do you think it could be?” she asks softly.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Anything been bothering you at the Institute lately? More than normal, I mean?” She shakes her head, and he swallows hard. “I’m going to take a look.”

But before he reaches the door, a voice comes from beyond. “It’s just me,” says Basira. “I’m sorry it’s so late. I—Daisy, I’m sorry. Can we talk?”

Martin looks at Daisy, who’s staring at the door, eyes wide and pained, teeth worrying her lower lip. She limps across the room without seeming to notice what she’s doing, only stopping when she’s standing right in front of the door.

“I didn’t realize,” Basira is saying. “I didn’t—I didn’t _know.”_ Martin can hear her take a ragged breath. “But I should’ve. You were telling me what was wrong the whole time, and I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry. I’m _so_ sorry.” 

Daisy leans her forehead against the door. “If I let you in,” she says, voice barely audible, “will you start listening?”

 _“Yes,”_ says Basira. “Yes, I will. I promise.”

Daisy’s hand goes to the lock, and Martin realizes with a start that this isn’t a conversation he needs to be present for. He raps his knuckles lightly on the wall to get Daisy’s attention. When she looks over at him, expression fragile in the dim light, he smiles faintly and waves before heading back to his room.

He can hear the creak of the front door behind him, and the low murmur of voices, but he doesn’t allow himself to dwell, or to try and pick out what’s being said. He tries to sleep for a while, but eventually gives up on counting sheep and grabs a book to distract himself from his nerves until he passes out. 

He’s never been good at dealing with changes, and there’s a big change on the horizon now. Hopefully, he muses, as his eyes finally slide shut, it’ll at least be a positive one.

* * *

The first thing Daisy notices when she wakes up is that her back is hideously sore. For one fuzzy, half-awake moment, she thinks several unkind thoughts about the cot she’s been camping out on down in Document Storage. Then, with a surge of confusion, she remembers that she hasn’t been living there for weeks.

And _then_ she remembers the events of the previous night, and jerks upright, narrowly missing hitting her head against Basira’s nose. 

Basira, whose lap Daisy has been apparently been using as a pillow all night, lifts her chin from her chest and blinks, bleary-eyed, as she surveys the room. As Daisy removes her feet from the armrest of the sofa and sits up, Basira’s eyes suddenly widen, and she looks over with a mixture of relief and lingering guilt on her face.

“Morning, Basira,” Daisy manages to say around a yawn. 

“Morning, Daisy,” says Basira, with a careful little smile, like she’s not quite sure if it’s allowed. Daisy smiles back, and then sighs.

“What’s wrong?” asks Basira, the smile evaporating immediately.

“Oh, nothing, just—I should’ve made sure to sleep in my actual bed.” Daisy stretches, wincing. “Today is going to be interesting.”

“Can I help?”

Daisy experimentally pushes herself halfway to standing, then lets herself fall back down onto the sofa when her head starts swimming. “Can you grab my cane? I left it leaning against my bedside table.”

“Sure,” says Basira. “Uh…”

“First door on your left in the hallway,” says Daisy. Basira vanishes into the dim depths of the flat—there are night-lights in every room except Martin’s bedroom, but the sun won’t be up for another hour—and returns a minute or two later with her prize.

Daisy has to move slowly—well, more slowly than usual—in order to avoid exhausting herself, stiff and tired as she is. But by the time she’s done showering and changing into fresh clothes, she’s actually feeling a tiny bit better. Plus, alongside the faint scent of tea (Martin had managed to convert her from coffee in less than a full week of sharing a flat), there’s a whiff of chocolate, and Daisy takes her stomach’s eager rumble as evidence that her appetite has decided to cooperate today.

When she comes into the kitchen, Martin is arranging a small heap of pastries from their breakfast stash on a plate by the toaster oven, and Basira is sitting at the kitchen table, hands clasped in her lap again. They both look up and smile when Daisy comes in.

Breakfast is a quiet but peaceful affair. Martin and Basira don’t say much to each other, but although it’s clear they’re not close enough to be called friends, they’re both perfectly pleasant, with none of the acrimony Daisy had been half-worried about. Basira even offers to help with the miniscule pile of dishes afterwards, and though Martin rebuffs her, he does so with a smile.

As she and Basira gather up their things in preparation to leave for work, Daisy entertains a vague fantasy of a string of mornings like this. Martin and Basira, and Jon, too—all the people she cares about most—puttering around the kitchen with her in the gray pre-dawn, sitting around the little round table. 

It’s far from the first time she’s considered such a thing. But it is the first time that, instead of banishing the notion out of hand, she mentally folds it up, and sets it aside for later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Nothing above the baseline.
> 
> Tell me your favorite line, if you like!


	7. The Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end notes.

“Four days?” says Daisy over the speakerphone, shock plain in her voice. “That’s so sudden.”

“It does feel that way, doesn’t it,” says Jon, fiddling with the edge of his sheet. Though his energy remains low, he’s been properly aware of his surroundings for the past few days, with very few other lingering ill effects from his extended time on life support. Martin’s hardly an expert, but even he knows that it’s nothing short of a miracle. “But, if nothing comes up in that time, they say there’s no real reason to keep me in hospital any longer. I don’t need to re-learn to walk, so I won’t need a rehabilitation clinic, most likely. And I have a feeling the Institute isn’t going to intervene on my behalf, now that I’m officially off of payroll.” He swallows. “I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do.”

“What do you mean?” Martin asks.

Jon’s hands flutter anxiously in his lap, as though he’s not quite sure what to do with them. “I didn’t exactly—plan ahead. I mean, I haven’t had my own flat in more than a year. I’ve just been living out of Document Storage.” The corners of his mouth turn down. “There are some—resources. Programs to help get used to... sudden vision loss. Services I can sign up for. But I don’t know where I’ll  _ go. _ ”

“Actually, we, um. We might be able to help with that?” Martin swallows. Here it comes: the moment of truth.

Jon turns his head toward Martin. “You’ll help me find a place?” They haven’t had more than a handful of proper conversations in months, so Martin is grateful to find that he still knows Jon well enough to be able to detect the relief in his voice.

“If that’s what you want, then yes,” says Daisy.

Jon’s face tilts back towards where the phone is sitting in his lap. “But?”

“Well, the two of us have a flat together—” Martin begins.

Jon chokes. “Wh— _ really?  _ You, you two are flatmates now? I thought I imagined that!”

Martin laughs, and he can hear Daisy doing the same. “Yeah! Yeah, actually,” he says. “I was sick of living alone, and she was sick of living in the archives, so we just sort of… moved in together. It’s been... really nice, as it turns out.”

Jon huffs out a little chuckle of his own. “I’m glad to hear it. Christ, I’m so glad you’re both all right. I wasn’t—I should’ve—” He swallows. “I didn’t think until after I… until after I did it, that it meant I wouldn’t be there, if something happened. To either of you. Guess it’s a good thing you didn’t need me.”

“Jon—”

“No, no, I don’t—that came out all wrong, I—I’m not trying to get you to, to pity me or something.” He sighs, head slumping back against the pillow. “It’s a  _ good _ thing, that nothing fell to pieces the minute I stopped being there.”

Martin reaches out and lightly touches the back of Jon’s nearer wrist with his fingertips. He’s been doing it often enough over the past few days—with Jon’s permission, of course—that Jon doesn’t flinch in surprise. To Martin’s relief, Jon doesn’t pull away, just draws in a tiny breath and covers Martin’s hand with his trembling free one. “We wouldn’t have become friends at all, if not for you,” says Martin gently. “Daisy and I only started talking because we were both coming to visit you here every day.”

“And I’d still be visiting, if not for… well, you know,” says Daisy. “I’m sorry I can’t be there in person.”

“Oh,” says Jon faintly. After a moment, he shakes his head, and turns to face Martin’s general direction again. “Sorry, I interrupted you. What were you saying before?”

“Daisy and I have a flat,” says Martin. “Loads of space—we haven’t exactly finished furnishing it yet, so it would be easy enough to add, um, to add another bed and everything. We don’t exactly have a—a spare room, it’s only a two-bedroom, but if you don’t want to share with either of us, we could share one, and, and you could take the other?”

“It’s on the ground floor,” Daisy puts in helpfully. “No stairs or elevator or anything, and we got a good deal on the rent since the view’s not so great. And it’s pretty quiet, and we’re really near a Tube station.”

Jon doesn’t speak for a moment. Then he asks, in a fragile little voice, “And would it be—just until I can find a place of my own? Or—?”

“I mean, if you get fed up with us after a month or two, we won’t stop you from finding a new flat,” says Daisy in her fondest don’t-be-an-idiot voice. Then she sobers, and adds, “And of course, we’ll both help you search, if that’s what you want. But I’m pretty sure I speak for both of us when I say that we—we want you to come home. To stay.”

Martin has to discreetly wipe at his eyes with his free hand at that. Jon sniffles twice before saying, “Yes, I—thank, you. Thank you. I think I will.”

* * *

Daisy hangs up to let the two of them hash out the room situation, after assuring them that she’ll be fine with whatever configuration they decide on as long as she doesn’t have to relocate. Then she takes a few minutes to let the dizziness and fatigue from the phone call fade before heading into Basira’s office.

Basira is sitting behind the desk, which is clear of clutter for once. All the statements, all of Basira’s copious notes, are shoved into a more-or-less orderly pile on one of the shelves. The only exception is a single sheaf of papers—handwritten, on Institute letterhead—with a tape recorder on top, squared neatly away on one of the corners of the desk. Waiting for Basira to need them, probably.

Daisy drops into the chair in front of the desk with a sigh of relief, flexing her aching feet. “So,” she says. “Jon’s awake. Properly, this time.”

Basira nods. “Do you think he’ll be okay with me asking him—? Shit.” She rubs her face. “This is harder than I thought it was going to be. I’d like to know, um, whether you think he’d be willing to answer—whether he’d be willing to tell me about what it was like for him. How much time I have before I have to… think about drastic measures. And what warning signs I’ll have.” She sighs, shoulders slumping.

Daisy reaches across the desk and takes one of Basira’s hands in hers. Basira doesn’t exactly smile, but her face softens at the sight of their interlaced fingers. “I’ll ask—or, I’ll let him know,” says Daisy gently. “But I’d say you probably have at least a year, right? That’s about how long it was between us starting to pass him the tapes and the Unknowing. And maybe, if you know to fight it from the start, you’ll have longer.”

“I hope so,” says Basira, and squeezes her hand, very gently.

After a few minutes, they reconfigure, settling their chairs next to each other so that their shoulders and legs are brushing. Basira, with nothing else to do now that she’s officially not cooperating anymore, pulls out an introductory Braille book—“The earlier I start, the easier it’ll probably be,” she says to Daisy’s questioning look—and starts reading, exploring the embossed pages with uncertain fingertips. Daisy just lets herself drift, euphoria at finally being back in harmony with Basira eliminating any need for other distractions.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t last. Their peaceful morning is interrupted not fifteen minutes later by a knock at the door. Before either of them can ask who’s there, it clicks open to reveal Elias, whose expression is colder and more vicious than Daisy has ever seen.

“I am  _ really quite disappointed  _ in you, Archivist,” Elias snaps. “Or, Basira, I suppose I should say, since you  _ apparently _ are so ungrateful for your promotion that you’re determined to resign rather than accept it properly.”

Basira meets his gaze, unflinching. “I am.”

Daisy’s heart is in her throat. She’d  _ forgotten. _ They’d been so focused on fixing the problem of Basira following after Jon that Elias’s likely opinion on the matter had slipped her mind entirely. She thinks of the taped confession that Martin and Melanie had handed over to the police—that had apparently not stopped Elias from walking out of prison the moment he felt like it—and swallows hard.

But Elias, to her surprise and relief, does not produce a weapon. Instead he scowls, looking for a moment almost like a child deprived of a new toy. “In that case,” he says, each word enunciated sharply, “I will arrange for you to be transferred to the library department, effective immediately.”

Daisy and Basira exchange a baffled glance. “What?” says Basira.

“This Institute needs a competent and  _ diligent _ Head Archivist,” says Elias, his voice frigid. “Since you’re clearly unwilling to do the job, I shall have to make other arrangements.”

Basira’s eyes narrow. “Do you really think we’re just going to stand by while—”

“I think no such thing,” says Elias. “Allow me to make myself clear. The reason why I am transferring you to junior positions, rather than taking more, ah,  _ drastic _ disciplinary measures, is because I wish to avoid further loss of morale among the other staff.”

Daisy thinks briefly about the well-publicized Prentiss incident, about the articles that never quite made a connection between the Institute and the explosion in Yarmouth but  _ implied _ it loud and clear, about the long string of missing-persons notices and obituaries, and forms a hunch. “Or media attention,” she adds.

Elias nods, still stiff with repressed fury. “You will receive an email with more details later today. I expect you to report to the library promptly tomorrow morning.” He turns on his heel and sweeps out of the room.

“Do you feel—” Daisy starts to ask, as soon as Elias is out of earshot.

“I don’t know,” says Basira, rubbing her face. “Too early to tell, I think. What in the  _ world?” _

“He’s going to try and start over,” says Daisy. “Right? He can’t just be giving up. I mean, he said himself that he needs a competent Head Archivist.”

But Basira is frowning. “He  _ knows _ that we’ll try to warn off whoever it is. And maybe it’s possible that he could stop us from contacting them. But there’s no way he can stop every single avenue of communication. I mean, even if we can’t manage direct communication, there’s going to be  _ gossip. _ And I don’t think he’s going to be keen on splitting the Institute staff into two groups who aren’t allowed to talk to each other.”

“And if he’s serious about wanting to avoid upsetting the rest of the staff, or attracting media attention, then he doesn’t have much leverage to threaten us, as long as we keep quiet,” Daisy adds. “Unless that was a bluff? But why would he bluff in a way that makes us think there  _ won’t _ be consequences for acting against him?” She groans and buries her face in her hands.

There are a few minutes of silence. Then—

“The Usher Foundation,” says Basira suddenly. “And Pu Songling, and all the other sister institutions. Whatever he was doing here, it didn’t involve much contact with them. Which means that if he starts this all up again somewhere else—”

“—We probably won’t know anything about it. And it’s not like he’s going to be letting us travel abroad anytime soon, if ever.” Daisy sighs. “That’s got to be it.”

“And without one of us being the Archivist, it’ll be harder for us to get any reliable information,” Basira adds. “I mean, not that it was helping us much before, but the avenue will be closed off. And it’s not like the rest of the Institute is going to believe us, not with the way they all talk about the archives.” 

They both sit in silence for another few minutes. 

Eventually, Basira speaks up again. “We’ll figure something out,” she says. “Hey. We’re out of imminent danger, and we know—basically—what we have to do next. Let’s call it a day. We can worry about the rest tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” says Daisy, and leans against Basira’s side. “Yeah, all right.”

Daisy spends a few minutes wallowing in relief before she pulls herself upright, grabs her cane, and heads for the door.

“Daisy? What are you doing?”

“Trying something,” says Daisy, making her way toward the archives’ exit. 

She lays a hand experimentally on the doorknob. Nothing. She turns it, takes a step through. Nothing. She takes a dozen steps down the corridor.

Still nothing.

“Daisy?”

“It seems like I might be able to leave the building,” says Daisy. “I thought it might look odd if I had to come earlier and stay later than everyone else in the library, so I figured…”

“Oh,” says Basira. “Well, that’s—good! That’s a relief.” She comes up to Daisy’s side, and gently takes her hand.

Daisy smiles at her. “Want to get out of here? I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun, and I think I could manage a walk, as long as it’s short.”

Basira smiles back. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Martin can hardly believe what he’s hearing. “And he’s just—letting Basira go?  _ After _ she’s started showing supernatural abilities?”

Daisy shrugs as she spreads peanut butter over her second slice of Martin’s homemade bread. “She wasn’t going to cooperate. He must’ve decided to cut his losses, I guess.” She bites her lip. “Honestly, I—I don’t mean this in an insensitive way? But it’s probably lucky for us that Jon—and Melanie too—quit like that. If he tried to stage some accident, it would look…”

“Really suspicious,” says Martin, and nods. “If he really is leaving us alone, he might be reaching the end of his influence with the, I dunno, the relevant authorities? Maybe we should set up some way to leak some incriminating information, in case something happens to one of us.”

“Probably wouldn’t be able to prove anything,” Daisy says, screwing the cap back onto the jar. 

“Still, it might be inconvenient for him,” says Martin. “At the very least, it would make the other staff suspicious. And the more reason we can give him to leave us well enough alone, the better.”

“True.”

They continue to eat in companionable silence for several minutes more. A thought occurs to Martin, as he finishes the last of his own dinner. “Where’s Basira going to be living?”

“She still has her old flat,” says Daisy. “It’s tiny, so the rent’s actually very reasonable, apparently. And she didn’t want to move all her stuff to a storage unit, and she had hopes of moving back in once things settled down, so she kept it even after she moved into the archives. Good thing, too.”

“D’you think…” Martin bites his lip. “Do you think you’re going to want to live with her? At some point?”

“I’m not planning on moving into her place, if that’s what you’re asking,” says Daisy. “I swear, a shoebox would be more comfortable.”

“Then, do you think you’re going to want to invite her to live here? Eventually, I mean?” Martin asks. 

Daisy shrugs again. “I mean, eventually, probably. We decided to take it slow for a while, try and figure out how to be together now that I’m not… the same person I used to be. But we’re definitely back together, and, I mean…” A faint blush rises on her gaunt cheeks. “I can’t imagine that I  _ won’t _ want to, once we’ve got our feet under us again.” She glances up. “Do you think that’s going to be okay with you?”

“Well, if the other day was anything to judge by, I think it’ll be fine,” he says. “Especially if we have some time to warm up to each other first.”

“I just hope she and Jon get along.” Then a sly smile creeps across Daisy’s face. “Speaking of people moving in, what did you two decide about the room situation?”

Now it’s Martin’s turn to blush. He covers his face with his hands, as though that could stop the rising warmth in his face. “We agreed that, since we’re, um,  _ officially _ starting a relationship—” Daisy’s smile widens, but to Martin’s relief, she doesn’t say anything, just motions him to continue. “That it’s a bit… fast? For us to room together, too. But…”

“But?”

Martin feels his face get even warmer. “But, we’re pretty, um, sure of each other. And he said, it’ll be hard enough to get used to navigating by touch, so he’d rather not have to re-learn where everything is in a month or two. So he’ll be moving in with me after all.” Daisy makes a show of wiping her brow, and Martin frowns. “What? I thought you said—”

She laughs. “I’m just glad I’m not going to have to eat a shoe.” It takes Martin a moment to remember what she’s talking about, and then he’s laughing, too.

When the laughter dies down, Martin sighs. “I just hope…” 

“What is it?” Daisy asks, when he doesn’t elaborate.

“I just hope that it all turns out well,” he says quietly. “I hope he’s happy here, and I hope things work out with you and Basira, too. I hope we all keep getting along, and nothing goes spectacularly off the rails when you and I start in the library, and… you know.” He waves a hand expansively, unable to put his myriad worries into better words.

Daisy reaches across the table and pats his other hand. “Remember what things were like, right after Jon quit?”

Martin shudders.

“Exactly,” says Daisy. “But we put in so much work, and we stuck together, and we made it this far. I’m not going to give up if the going gets hard, and I don’t think you are, either. Right?”

Martin shakes his head.

“And Basira’s not about to give up on me, and Jon’s not about to give up on you,” Daisy continues. “All we have to do now is just… stay the course. Keep taking care of each other.”

“I think I can manage that,” Martin mumbles.

Daisy levers herself up and out of her chair and ambles stiffly over to Martin, steadying herself on the edge of the table. He tenses to rise, but she gently pushes him back down into his seat before leaning against the back of his chair and wrapping her arms around his shoulders from behind. It takes him a minute to relax into it; he’s still getting used to Daisy’s increasingly frequent bouts of physical affection, especially because she’s still, on occasion, very pressure-sensitive, which makes reciprocation complicated.

“S’not just about taking care of other people, silly,” she says. “S’about letting them take care of you, too. In whatever way you need.”

Martin swallows, and reaches up to take hold of one of her hands where it rests on his shoulder. “You know,” he starts to say, but his voice is all clogged up. He clears his throat a few times. “You know, I think I’m getting better at that,” he says.

“I agree,” says Daisy. They both rest there in silence, holding onto each other, until Daisy has to sit back down. She scoots her chair over to sink while Martin gathers up the dishes, ready, as usual, to dry while he washes.

But before he turns on the tap, Martin pauses. “Thank you,” he says, quiet and serious. “For showing me the way home.”

“Thank  _ you,” _ she says. “Only way I could’ve found it was to try and share it with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Nothing above the baseline.
> 
> You may have noticed this fic is now part of a series! Expect one or two shorter fics continuing this AU in the next few weeks. 
> 
> Want to make my day? Tell me what part of this story was your favorite!


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